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History of Methodist Reform, Volume I

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History of Methodist Reform, Volume I WESLEYAN HERITAGE Library M. E. Church History History of Methodist Reform Volume I By Edward J. Drinkhouse, M.D., D.D. “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” Heb 12:14 Spreading Scriptural Holiness to the World Wesleyan Heritage Publications © 1998 HISTORY OF METHODIST REFORM Synoptical of General Methodism 1703 to 1898 With Special and Comprehensive Reference to Its Most Salient Exhibition in the History of the METHODIST PROTESTANT CHURCH By Edward J. Drinkhouse, M.D., D.D. (Eighteen Years Editor of "The Methodist Protestant") Ad astra per aspera "Till it be proved that some special law of Christ hath forever annexed unto the clergy alone the power to make ecclesiastical laws, we are to hold it as a thing most consonant with equity and reason that no ecclesiastical laws be made in a Christian community without consent of the laity as well as the clergy." — Bishop Hooker "He who has no right to the thing he possesses cannot prescribe or plead any length of time to make his possession lawful." — Dr. Barrow. The equity of all history is: Hear the other side. — The Author The Board of Publication of the Methodist Protestant Church Wm. J. C. Dulany, Agent, Baltimore, Md. F. W. Pierpont, Agent, Pittsburgh, Pa Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1899, By Edward J. Drinkhouse, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D.C. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.— Berwick & Smith Norwood, Mass. U.S.A. VOLUME I — PART 1 (Volume I, through Chapter 10) ************************************* METHODIST REFORM Edward J. Drinkhouse, M.D., D.D. PREFACE The writing of a History of the Methodist Protestant Church was first suggested to me by the Rev. W. C. Lipscomb in the autumn of 1877. Bassett's History had just been issued from the press. Written from the point of view of "The Methodist" (Protestant) Church of the North and West it was found quite unsatisfactory to the East and South, not so much from what it stated, as from what it failed to state. Hence this suggestion to me, then editor of The Methodist Protestant, Baltimore, Md. It was a surprise and not entertained. I had been a close student of Methodist history since 1850. More mature reflection led to the conclusion that it might be my providential task, if proper leisure and apt environment ever came to me, It led to a painstaking collection, often at considerable personal expense, of all the sources and authorities bearing upon general Methodism and of the Methodist Protestant Church in particular, through intervening years of exacting editorial toil down to 1892. Then came retirement from official position and leisure for the work. It has been diligently pursued through five years as an uncompensated labor of love and from a settled conviction that "the truth of history" demanded the work at my hands. The result is before the reader in these octavo volumes. The Reform movement in the Methodist Episcopal Church during the decade of 1820-30, never contemplated a separate Church organization. This was made a necessity by the Expulsions of 1827-30, as a concerted action of the authorities of that Church. Nor for a decade of years after 1830, did the expelled and their seceding friends of governmental Reform in Methodism abandon the hope that their quondam associates would become amenable to reason and the sense of restitution on terms of reinstatement such as Christian manhood could accept. In consequence, inadequate care was taken to preserve historical documents and the local story of Reform movements. Apart from the records of its periodical press no attempt was made to embody the facts until 1843, when a twelvemo volume was issued by Rev. James R. Williams, of Baltimore, Md., the cradle of Reform as it was of Methodism. It covered succinctly the period to 1842. The small edition was soon exhausted, but it was never republished, and fugitive copies are all that remain of this initial History. It was unsatisfactory to North Carolina and the circumjacent territory as dealing too sparsely with the movement in that section. Dr. J. T. Bellamy gathered material and wrote a History, but for unexpressed reasons during his last illness ordered his son to burn it. Rev. Dr. John Paris, also of North Carolina, in 1849, issued a twelvemo volume of more inclusive character and historical analysis. Like the History of Williams, it answered the demand of the period, but was never republished, and scattered copies only are to be found among our preachers and people. About 1855-60, Rev. Dr. Dennis B. Dorsey, Sr., then resident at Fairmont, W. Va. prepared a skeleton of a Church History and had largely filled it in, but his decease cut short the work and it never appeared. The Church had now grown in the West and North with a record of its own and on lines of separation from the adhering conferences, and a demand was made for a history from its point of view. It was furnished as already suggested by Rev. Dr. A. H. Bassett in a twelvemo volume, issued in 1877. It was afterward enlarged and amended, and for a score of years has been the dependence of the reunited Church. This triangular supply of data needed a central and unsectional array with the addition of a logical connection and philosophical treatment. It was this task the writer undertook under the extreme advantage of many years' residence in Baltimore, the Methodist center of historic data. How well he has performed the work it will be for the reader to decide. The sources and authorities cited in this History, with rare exceptions noted, are in the author's possession to be preserved intact, and held accessible for verification under any reasonable request, inasmuch as many of its allegations are at variance with the received historical statements; and a whole class of facts is disclosed heretofore minified or suppressed by, or unknown to, historical writers on both English and American Methodism. The writer has been careful of the ground so that a challenge is hereby recorded of successful contradiction of its averments as to matters of fact. His inferential positions may at times be strained or erroneous and these he submits to such controversial questioning as may be possible. It is the custom of most historians to prefix to their work a bibliography of the sources and authorities consulted in its preparation. Such a compilation is not only helpful but necessary, when citations have been made without such references. In this work all citations are verified as to source and authority in the numerous foot-notes of the current narrative, so that a bibliography would be but a repetition of these titles. Sometimes the bibliography as a porch is more imposing than the structure, and carries the semblance at least of pedantry. Its absence in this work is not a loss. The writer discovered when midway in his preparatory investigation that a History of the Methodist Protestant Church, logically stated and philosophically treated, could not be prepared without an enlargement of its original purview so inclusive as to comprehend at least synoptically the whole history of Methodism. The germinal principles incorporated in its Constitution and Discipline were disclosed in the governmental Reform movements during Wesley's life and since in English Methodism. And it is a remarkable fact that, without cooperation or knowledge of each other's movements, under the instigation of a common hierarchic rule, thoughtful Methodists both of the ministry and laity on either side of the ocean were working on independent lines to the same end of governmental Reform. The writer therefore found it necessary to give a broader title to his work as "The History of Methodist Reform," with his own denomination as the objective. The discriminating reader will discover that there was nothing new in the Methodist Reform movements from the tentative ones of Gatch, Dickins, O'Kelly and others in Virginia as early as 1778; of O'Kelly, McKendree, Rice Haggard, Hope Hull and others in 1792; the more effective ones of Snethen, Emory, Stockton and others in 1820-24; and later of Shinn, Jennings, Brown, Dorsey, McCaine and others for 1824-30. The objections they formulated and the protests they entered against the Paternal system of Asbury and the hierarchic features embodied by his pliant followers in the "Rules and Regulations" of the Methodist Episcopal Church of 1784, are all to be found in the seed of kindred objections and protests made by Wesleyan Methodist preachers and laymen from quite an early period of English Methodism down to the climacteric movement of 1849, which shook the parent body to its foundations. Another great advantage of this historical method is, that it furnishes our own denominational readers succinctly all of Methodist literature without recourse to historians and monographists whose coloring is unfavorable to liberal views. As common property it is, therefore, appropriated for information as to the rise and progress of doctrinal Methodism and its spiritual agencies, called "means of grace," touching which perfect unity has been preserved among our coreligionists the wide world over; as well as for contrast of governmental methods, equal prosperity attending diverse polities, and thus demonstrating that it was primarily due, not to any particular system, but to the doctrines and means of grace formulated by the Wesleys out of the Scriptures and the needs of the period. As collateral to this method and an irrefragable corollary from the facts of history, one of the fundamentals of this work is submitted as proven; to wit, that the dominant system on either shore of the Atlantic is responsible directly or indirectly for all the divisions of Methodism, and that in consequence organic unity is an impossibility, even if it could be shown politic, until the divisive elements in the dominating systems are eliminated.
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