state oppressive statutes concerning religion fell into disuse and were gradually repealed. Survivals may still be found, as in nature we in this day meet with survivals of an earlier geological period. It had been foreseen that "the happy consequences of the grand experiment on the advantages which accompany tolerance and liberty would not be limited to America.' The statute of Virginia, translated into French and into Italian, was widely circulated through Europe. A part of the work of "the noble army of martyrs" was done. During the colonial period the Anglican establishment was feared, because its head was an external temporal power engaged in the suppression of colonial liberties, and was favored by the officers of that power even to the disregard of justice. National independence and religious freedom dispelled the last remnant of jealousy. The American branch at first thought it possible to perfect their organization by themselves; but they soon preferred as their starting-point a final fraternal act of the church of England. No part of the country, no sect, no person showed a disposition to thwart them in their purpose; and no one complained of the unofficial agency of Jay, the American minister of foreign affairs at home, and of John Adams, the American minister in London, in aid of their desire, which required the consent of the British parliament and a consecration by the Anglican hierarchy. Their wish having been fulfilled in the form to which all of them gave assent and which many of them regarded as indispensable, the Protestant Episcopal church of the United States moved onward with a life of its own to the position which it could never have gained but by independence. For America no bishop was to be chosen at the dictation of a temporal power to electors under the penalty of high treason for disobedience; no advowson of church livings could be tolerated; no room was left for simony; no tenure of a ministry as a life estate was endured where a sufficient reason required a change; the laity was not represented by the highest officer of state and the legislature, but stood for itself; no alteration of prayer, or creed, or government could be introduced by the temporal chief, or by that chief and the legislature. The rule of the church proceeded * Luzerne to Rayneval, 6 November 1784. from its own living power representing all its members. The Protestant Episcopal congregations in the several United States of America, including the clergy of Connecticut who at first. went a way of their own, soon fell into the custom of meeting in convention as one church, and gave a new bond to union. Since the year 1785 they have never asked of any American. government a share in any general assessment, and have grown into greatness by self-reliance. The acknowledged independence of the United States called suddenly into a like independence a new and self-created rival Episcopal church, destined to spread its branches far and wide over the land with astonishing rapidity. Out of a society of devout and studious scholars in the University of Oxford, within less than sixty years, grew the society of Methodists. As some of the little republics of ancient time selected one man as their law-giver, as all men on board a ship trust implicitly to one commander during the period of the voyage, so the Methodist connection in its beginning left to John Wesley to rule them as he would. Its oldest society in the states was at New York, and of the year 1766. In 1772 Wesley appointed, as his "general assistant" in America,* Francis Asbury, a missionary from England, a man from the people, who had "much wisdom and meekness; and under all this, though hardly to be perceived, much command and authority."† Wesley never yielded to the temptation to found a separate church within British dominions, and during the war of American independence used his influence to keep the societies which he governed from renouncing their old allegiance. But no sooner had the people of the United States been recognised as a nation by the king of England himself, and the movement to found an American episcopacy had begun, than he burst the bonds that in England held him from schism, and resolved to get the start of the English hierarchy. In October 1783,\ in a general epistle, he peremptorily directed his American brethren to receive "Francis Asbury as the general assistant."‡ For nearly forty years Wesley had been persuaded that the apostolical succession is a “fable"; that "bishops and presby+ Coke's Journal, 16. Wesley to the brethren in America, 3 October 1783. Asbury's Journal, 10 October 1772. ters are the same order, and have the same right to ordain." He looked upon himself to be as much a bishop "as any man in Europe," though he never allowed any one to call him by that name. In his service for the Methodists he substituted the word elders for priests, and superintendents for bishops. He, therefore, did not scruple, on the second day of September 1784, himself, in his own private room at Bristol, in England, assisted by Coke and another English presbyter, to or dain two persons as ministers, and then he, with the assistance of other ministers ordained by himself, equal at least in number to the requisition of the canon, did, "by the imposition of his hands and prayer, set apart Thomas Coke, a presbyter of the church of England, as a superintendent, and, under his hand and seal, recommended him to whom it might concern as a fit person to preside over the flock of Christ." It is Coke himself who writes of Wesley: "He did, indeed, solemnly invest me, as far as he had a right so to do, with episcopal authority."* Eight days later, in a general epistle, he thus addressed Thomas Coke, Francis Asbury, and the brethren in North America: "By a very uncommon train of providences, provinces in North America are erected into independent states. The English government has no authority over them, either civil or ecclesiastical. Bishops and presbyters are the same order, and consequently of the same right to ordain. In America there are no bishops who have a legal jurisdiction. Here, therefore, my scruples are at an end. I have accordingly appointed Dr. Coke and Mr. Francis Asbury to be joint superintendents over our brethren in North America. I cannot see a more rational and scriptural way of feeding and guiding those poor sheep in the wilderness. As our American brethren are now totally disentangled both from the state and from the English hierarchy, we dare not entangle them again either with the one or the other. They are now at full liberty simply to follow the Scriptures and the primitive church, and we judge it best that they should stand fast in that liberty wherewith God has so strangely made them free." Nor did Wesley neglect to frame from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer a revised liturgy for the new church, * Coke to Bishop White, 24 April 1791, in White's Memoirs, 424. and a creed from which the article on predestination was left out. On the eighteenth of September, about two months before the nonjuring bishops of Scotland consecrated a bishop for Connecticut, Coke, the first Methodist "superintendent" for America, was on the water, emulous of the glory of Francis Xavier. "Oh, for a soul like his!" he cried. "I seem to want the wings of an eagle or the voice of a trumpet, that I may proclaim the gospel through the east and the west, and the north and the south." Arriving in New York, he explained to the preacher stationed at that place the new regulation, and received for answer: "Mr. Wesley has determined the point; and therefore it is not to be investigated, but complied with."* Coke journeyed at once toward Baltimore, where Asbury had his station. At Dover, in Delaware, "he met with Freeborn Garretson, an excellent young man, all meekness and love, and yet all activity." On Sunday, the fourteenth of November, the day on which a bishop for Connecticut was consecrated at Aberdeen, he preached in a chapel in the midst of a forest to a noble congregation. After the service, a plain, robust man came up to him in the pulpit and kissed him. He was not deceived when he thought it could be no other than Francis Asbury, who had collected there a considerable number of preachers in council. The plan of Wesley pleased them all. At the instance of Asbury it was resolved to hold a general conference; and "they sent off Freeborn Garretson like an arrow from north to south, directing him to dispatch messengers right and left and gather all the preachers together at Baltimore on Christmas eve." + Thence Coke moved onward, baptizing adults and infants, preaching sometimes in a church, though it would not hold half the persons who wished to hear; sometimes at the door of a cottage when the church-door was locked against him. ‡ On Christmas eve, at Baltimore, began the great conference which organized the Methodists of America as a separate fold in the one "flock of Christ." Of the eighty-one American preachers, nearly sixty were present, most of them young. Here Coke *Coke's First Journal, 7, 13. + Coke's Journal, 16. + Ibid., 27. took his seat as superintendent; and here, joining to himself two elders, he set apart Francis Asbury as a deacon and on the next day as an elder. Here eleven or more persons were elected elders, and all of them who were present were consecrated; here Asbury, who refused to receive the office of superintendent at the will of Wesley alone, was unanimously "elected bishop or superintendent by the suffrages of the whole body of Methodist ministers through the continent, assembled in general conference;" and here Coke, obeying the directions of Wesley, took to himself at least the canonical number of presbyters, and ordained him, Francis Asbury, as "a superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America."* In the ordination sermon delivered on that day and published at the time, Coke asserts his own "right to exercise the episcopal office," and defines the title of superintendent as the equivalent of "bishop." + In April 1785 Coke began to exhort the Methodist societies in Virginia to emancipate their slaves, and bore public testimony against slavery and against slave-holding. It provoked the unawakened to combine against him; but one of the brethren gave liberty to his eight slaves. In North Carolina, where the laws of the state forbade any to emancipate their negroes, the Methodist conference drew up a petition to the assembly, entreating them to authorize those who were so disposed to set them free. Asbury visited the governor and gained him over. At the Virginia conference in May they formed a petition, of which a copy was given to every preacher, inviting the general assembly of Virginia to pass a law for the immediate or gradual emancipation of all slaves. For this they sought the signature of freeholders. And yet in June the conference thought it prudent to suspend the minute concerning slavery on account of the great opposition given it, "our work," they said, "being in too infantile a state to push things to extremity." The Methodist itinerant ministers learned to love more and more "a romantic way of life," "the preaching to large con * Coke's certificate, 27 December 1784. Coke in Tyerman's Life and Times of John Wesley, iii., 437. |