[788] History of Methodism, vol. i., book iii., chap. v.
The persistent misrepresentations of him on this
point are astonishing. The Rev. Edwin Sidney (Life of
Walker, of Truro, p. 260) says that “when he wanted
ordained preachers for America, he, of a sudden,
_in his old age_, found out, by reading Lord King’s
Account of the Primitive Church, that bishops and
presbyters are of the same order.” This inexcusable
violation of historical truth is common in the
writings of Churchmen against Methodism.
[789] A Letter to a Friend, Works, vol. vii., p. 301.
[790] Letter to Rev. Mr. Clark, Works, vol. vii., p. 284.
[791] “On the Church,” Works, vol. vii., p. 312.
[792] Burk’s History of Virginia, vol. ii., p. 180. Hawks
(Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of the
United States of America, vol. i., chap. ix.) doubts
Burk’s estimate. Dr. Hawks’s volume needs important
emendations, especially in respect to Methodism.
[793] Hawks’s “Contributions,” vol. i., chap. x.
[794] Journals of the Virginia Assembly, 1784.
[795] Bangs’s Hist. M. E. Church, vol. i., pp. 135-7.
[796] Works, vol. vii., p. 231.
[797] Coke’s Letter to Wesley, Smith’s History of Wesleyan
Methodism, vol. i., book ii., chap. 6.
[798] Drew’s Life of Coke, chap. 5.
[799] Unless the Moravians are to be considered an
exception.
[800] Jackson’s Charles Wesley, chap. 26.
[801] “To administer the sacraments of baptism and the
Lord’s Supper according to the usages of the Church
of England,” says the certificate of ordination (see
it in Life of Henry Moore, p. 134, Am. ed.); and yet
a living Churchman (Dr. Pusey’s Letter to the Bishop
of Oxford, p. 151) says that “Wesley reluctantly took
the step of ordaining at all;” and that “to the last
_he refused, in the strongest terms, his consent
that those thus ordained should take upon them to
administer the sacraments_. He felt that it exceeded
his powers, and so inhibited it, however it might
diminish the numbers of the society he had formed.”
The biographers of Wilberforce (vol. i., p. 248) also
say: “Nor were any of his preachers _suffered during
his lifetime to attempt to administer the sacraments
of his Church_.” It is high time that such fictions
should cease among English Churchmen. It seems that
they have yet to learn how thorough and noble a
heretic Wesley really was.
[802] Minutes of 1785, in Minutes of the Annual Conference
of the M. E. Church, vol. i., p. 22. New York, 1840.
[803] Drew’s Life of Coke, chap. 6. His assailant is
supposed to have been Charles Wesley. Etheredge’s
Coke, book ii., chap. 7.
[804] It had been used, however, all this time, in the
Minutes, as explanatory of the word “superintendent.”
The Minutes say that, “following the counsel of
Mr. John Wesley, who recommended the episcopal
mode of Church government, we thought it best to
become an episcopal Church, making the episcopal
office elective, and the elected superintendent,
or _bishop_, amenable to the body of ministers and
preachers.” Minutes, vol. i., p. 22. New York, 1840.
It was not in the bishops’ address to Washington in
1789 that the title was first _personally_ assumed.
The Discipline of 1787 so used it. Emory’s History
of the Discipline, p. 82. But, as we have just
seen, the title was inserted in the Minutes of the
Organization of the Church (1784, 1785) as synonymous
with “superintendent.” Minutes 1785, vol. i., p. 22.
Wesley’s letter of reproof to Asbury was written
before the bishops’ address to Washington.
[805] See his circular letter to the American Societies,
Drew’s Coke, chap. 5.
[806] Bishop (Saxon, bischop) is a corruption of the
Latinized Greek word episcopus. Its analogy to the
second and third syllables of the latter is obvious.
[807] Drew’s Life of Coke, chap. 5.
[808] Drew’s Life of Coke, chap. 5.
[809] Smith’s History of Methodism, vol. i., book ii.,
chap, vi., p. 541.
[810] Jackson’s Charles Wesley, chap. 26.
[811] Case of the Prot. Epis. Church in the United States,
etc., p. 25.
[812] Wesley was in good company among Churchmen in his
denunciation of the “fable” of the succession.
Chillingworth said, “I am fully persuaded there
hath been no such succession.” Bishop Stillingfleet
declares that “this succession is as muddy as the
Tiber itself.” Bishop Hoadley asserts, “It hath not
pleased God, in his providence, to keep up any proof
of the least probability, or moral possibility, of
a regular uninterrupted succession; but there is a
great appearance, and, humanly speaking, a certainty
to the contrary, that the succession hath often been
interrupted.” Archbishop Whately says “there is not a
minister in all Christendom who is able to trace up,
with approach to certainty, his spiritual pedigree.”
[813] Tyerman’s Wesley, vol. iii. An. 1784.
[814] History of Methodism, vol. iii., _passim_. History of
the M. E. Church, vol. ii., p. 151; vol. iv., p. 503.
[815] Drew’s Life of Coke, p. 62. Etheridge (Life of
Coke, p. 101) says: “A writer in the Quarterly
Review affirms that it was Coke who first requested
Wesley to make him a bishop, and send him as such
to America. The opposite is the truth: the request
came from Wesley, and took Coke by surprise. He had
not even given the clerical question involved in
the project any serious consideration; and he first
required of Wesley some time for investigation,
before he could express with confidence an opinion
upon it at all. He now applied himself to those
Biblical and patristic studies which bear upon the
subject, and after the lapse of two months, spent
partly in Scotland, communicated to Wesley that the
conclusions at which he had arrived enabled him,
without any hesitation, to concur with himself as to
the abstract lawfulness of the measure which had been
propounded.”
[816] Tyerman’s Wesley, vol. iii., p. 428.
[817] Tyerman, vol. iii., p. 344.
[818] History of M. E. Church, vol. iii., p. 41. Also vol.
iv., p. 443.
[819] Tyerman, vol. iii., p. 434.
[820] See Etheridge’s Coke, p. 368. Etheridge gives all the
facts of the case, and fully vindicates Coke from the
charge of unchristian ambition.
[821] Tyerman, vol. iii., p. 434.
[822] Smith, History of Methodism, etc., vol. ii., p. 4, 3.
Stevens’s History of Methodism, vol. iii., p. 51.
[823] History of Methodism, vol. iii., p. 52.