FOOTNOTES:
[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.