It is another of the great providential facts of Wesley’s history that the same year which gave a constitutional security to Methodism in Great Britain was signalized by its episcopal organization in America, a measure which, by its consequences, may well be ranked among the most important events of Wesley’s important life. Here again did he follow, with simple wisdom, the guidance of that divine Providence, the recognition of which in the affairs of men, and especially in the affairs of the Church, was the crowning maxim of his philosophy and the crowning fact of his policy. He had been providentially preparing for this new and momentous exigency by that gradual development of his personal opinions which we have already traced. Bigoted even, as a High-Churchman, at the beginning of his career, we have seen him, year after year, attaining more liberal views of ecclesiastical policy. Nearly forty years before his ordinations for America, he had, after reading Lord King’s “Primitive Church,” renounced the opinion that a distinction of order, rather than of office, existed between bishops and presbyters.⁠[788] Fifteen years later he denied the necessity, though not the expediency, of episcopal ordination. Bishop Stillingfleet had convinced him that it was “an entire mistake that none but episcopal ordination was valid.”⁠[789] Henceforth he held that presbyters and bishops, identical in order, differing only in office, had essentially the same right of ordination. It was not possible for a man like Wesley, keen, quick, fearless, and candid, to remain long in any ecclesiastical prejudice now that he was on this track of progressive opinions. He soon broke away from all other regard for questions of Church government than that of Scriptural expediency; and as early as 1756, when in his maturest intellectual vigor, he declares: “As to my own judgment, I still believe ‘the episcopal form of Church government to be Scriptural and apostolical’—I mean, well agreeing with the practice and writings of the apostles; but that it is prescribed in Scripture I do not believe. This opinion, which I once zealously espoused, I have been heartily ashamed of ever since I read Bishop Stillingfleet’s ‘Irenicon.’ I think he has unanswerably proved that ‘neither Christ nor his apostles prescribe any particular form of Church government, and that the plea of divine right for diocesan episcopacy was never heard of in the primitive Church.’”⁠[790]

It was, then, by no new assumption in his old age—​in his imbecility, as some of his critics allege, that he now met the necessities of American Methodism by ordaining men to provide for them. His keenest-eyed associates could as yet detect no declension of his faculties; and if they could, still his course in this case was in accordance with the reasonings of his best days, and he but repeats his long-established opinions when he now asserts, “I firmly believe I am a Scriptural episcopos as much as any man in England, for the uninterrupted succession I know to be a fable, which no man ever did or can prove.”⁠[791]

Methodism had spread rapidly in America, notwithstanding the war of the Revolution. It now comprised eighty-three traveling preachers, besides some hundreds of local preachers, and about fifteen thousand members and many thousands of hearers, and its ecclesiastical plans were extending a network of powerful agencies over the country. The Revolution had not only dissolved the civil, but also the ecclesiastical relations of the colonies to England. Many of the English clergy, on whom the Methodist societies had depended for the sacraments, had fled from the land, or had entered political or military life, and the Episcopal Church had been generally disabled. In Virginia, the centre of its colonial strength, it had rapidly declined, morally as well as numerically. At the Declaration of Independence it included not more than one third of the population of that province.⁠[792] At the beginning of the war the sixty-one counties of Virginia contained ninety-five parishes, one hundred and sixty-four churches, and ninety-one clergymen. At the conclusion of the contest many of her churches were in ruins, nearly a fourth of her parishes “extinct or forsaken,” and thirty-four of the remaining seventy-two were without pastoral supplies; twenty-eight only of her ninety-one clergymen remained, and these, with an addition, soon after the war, of eight from other parts of the country, ministered in but thirty-six parishes.⁠[793] In the year in which Wesley ordained an American Methodist bishop, “memorials” to the Virginia Legislature for the incorporation of the “Protestant Episcopal Church in Virginia,” and for other advantages to religion, were met by counter petitions that “no step might be taken in aid of religion, but that it might be left to its own superior and successful influence.”⁠[794] The memorials were postponed till the next session, and then rejected; but a bill for the “incorporation of all religious societies which may apply for the same” was adopted. In other parts of the country the English Church never had been numerically strong, and its existence was now precarious, except in two or three large cities.

Under these circumstances the Methodists demanded of their preachers the administration of the sacraments. Many of the societies had been months, some of them years, without them. The demand was not only urgent, it was logically valid, but by the majority of the preachers it was not deemed expedient. The prudent delay which Wesley, notwithstanding his liberal ecclesiastical principles, had practiced in England, afforded a lesson which their good sense could not disregard. They exhorted their people, therefore, to wait patiently till he could be consulted. Thomas Rankin, one of Wesley’s missionaries, presiding at the Conference of Deer Creek, Maryland, 1777, induced them to delay one year. At the next session the subject was again prudently postponed, as no English preacher was present, Rankin having returned to England, and Asbury being absent and sick. In 1779 the question occasioned a virtual schism, the preachers of the South being resolute for the administration of the sacraments, those of the North still pleading for patient delay. The latter met in Conference at Judge White’s residence, the retreat of Asbury, in Delaware; the former at Brockenback Church, Fluvanna County, Virginia, where they made their own appointments, and proceeded to ordain themselves by the hands of three of their senior members, unwilling that their people should longer be denied their right to the Lord’s Supper, and their children and probationary members the rite of baptism. At the session of 1780 Asbury was authorized to visit the Southern preachers, and, if possible, conciliate them. He met them in Conference; they appeared determined not to recede, but at last consented to suspend the administration of the sacraments till further advice could be received from Wesley. The breach was thus happily repaired, but must evidently soon again be opened if redress should not be obtained.⁠[795]

What could Wesley do under these circumstances? What but exercise the right of ordination which he had for years theoretically claimed, but practically and prudently declined? He had importuned the authorities of the English Church in behalf of the Americans. In this very year he had written two letters to Lowth, Bishop of London, imploring ordination for a single preacher, who might appease the urgency of the American brethren by traveling among them as a presbyter, and by giving them the sacraments; but the request was denied, Lowth replying that “there are three ministers in that country already.” “What are these,” rejoined Wesley, “to watch over all that extensive country? I mourn for poor America, for the sheep scattered up and down therein—​part of them have no shepherds at all, and the case of the rest is little better, for their shepherds pity them not.”⁠[796] If there was any imprudence on the part of Wesley in this emergency, it was certainly in his long-continued patience, for he delayed yet nearly four years. When he yielded, it was only after the triumph of the American arms and the acknowledged independence of the colonies; and not then till urged to it by his most revered counselors. Fletcher, of Madeley, was one of these. That good man’s interest for American Methodism should endear his memory to the American Church. He had thoughts at one time of going to the New World and of giving himself to its struggling societies, but his feeble health forbade him.

Fletcher was present with Wesley and Coke at the Leeds Conference of 1784, and there, with his assistance,⁠[797] the question was brought to an issue. Wesley had previously consulted with Coke respecting it. He represented to Coke that as the Revolution had separated the United States from the mother country, and the Episcopal Establishment was utterly abolished in the States, it became his duty, as providentially at the head of the Methodist societies, to obey their demand and furnish for them the means of grace. He referred to the example of the Alexandrian Church, which, at the death of its bishops, provided their successors through ordination by its presbyters—​a historical fact exemplified during two hundred years. Recognized as their founder by the American Methodists, required by them to provide for their new necessities, and unable to induce the English prelates to do so, he proposed to appoint Coke, that he might go to the American societies as their superintendent or bishop, ordain their preachers, and thus afford them the sacraments with the least possible irregularity. Coke hesitated, but in two months wrote to Wesley accepting the office.⁠[798] Accordingly, accompanied by Rev. James Creighton, a presbyter of the Church of England, Coke met him at Bristol, and on the second of September, 1784, was ordained superintendent or bishop of the Methodist societies in America, an act of as high propriety and dignity as it was of urgent necessity. Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey were at the same time ordained presbyters; and on the third of November, attended by his two presbyters (the number necessary to assist a bishop in ordination, according to the usages of the English Church), Coke arrived in the Republic, and proceeded to ordain Francis Asbury, first as a deacon, then as a presbyter, and finally as a bishop, and to settle the organization of American Methodism, one of the most important ecclesiastical events (whether for good or evil) of the eighteenth century, or indeed since the Reformation, as its historical consequences attest.

The Colonial English Church being dissolved by the Revolution, its dwindled fragments were yet floating, as had been the Methodist societies, on the stormy tide of events. Methodism preceded it in reorganization. The Methodist bishops were the first Protestant bishops, and Methodism was the first Protestant Episcopal Church of the New World;⁠[799] and as Wesley had given it the Anglican Articles of Religion (omitting the seventeenth, on Predestination), and the Liturgy, wisely abridged, it became, both by its precedent organization and its subsequent numerical importance, the real successor to the Anglican Church in America.

Of course this extraordinary but necessary measure met with opposition from Charles Wesley. He still retained his High-Church opinions; he denounced the ordinations as schism; with his usual haste he predicted that Coke would return from “his Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore” to “make us all Dissenters here.” The poet was no legislator; he became pathetic in his remonstrances to his brother; “alas!” he wrote, “what trouble are you preparing for yourself, as well as for me, and for your oldest, truest, best friends! Before you have quite broken down the bridge, stop and consider! If your sons have no regard for you, have some for yourself. Go to your grave in peace; at least suffer me to go first, before this ruin is under your hand.” He did soon after go to his grave in peace, except the alarms of his imaginary fears, and the only evidence of the predicted “ruin” is seen to-day in the prevalent and permanent success of Methodism in both hemispheres.

The next year after the ordination of Coke, Wesley records in his Journal: “I was now considering how strangely the grain of mustard-seed, planted about fifty years ago, had grown up. It spread through all Great Britain and Ireland, the Isle of Wight, and the Isle of Man; then to America, through the whole continent, into Canada, the Leeward Islands, and Newfoundland. And the societies in all these parts walk by one rule, knowing religion is holy tempers, and striving to worship God, not in form only, but likewise in spirit and in truth.” His policy becomes more and more liberal as he now finds it necessary to fortify his cause before his approaching death. The following year (1786) he ordained six or seven more preachers, sending some to Scotland, and others to the West Indies,⁠[800] but he ordained none as yet for England, where he and his clerical friends could partially supply the sacraments. Three years later he ordained Mather, Rankin, and Moore.⁠[801] About a score of lay preachers received ordination from his hands, and for no other purpose but that they might administer the sacraments in cases of necessity.

Thus did providential events give shape and security to Methodism, as its aged leader approached his end.

No act of Wesley’s public life has been more misrepresented, if not misunderstood, than his ordination of Coke, and the consequent episcopal organization of his American societies. Churchmen, so called, have especially insisted that he did not design to confer upon Coke the character of a bishop; that Coke’s new office was designed to be a species of supervisory appointment, vague and contingent—​something widely different from episcopacy, however difficult to define; and that, therefore, the distinct existence of American Methodism, as an episcopal Church, is a fact contrary to the intention of Wesley.

No extant forensic argument, founded upon documentary evidence, is stronger than would be a right collocation of the evidence which sustains the claim of American Methodism respecting this question. All Methodist authorities, British as well as American, support that claim; its proofs have been more or less cited again and again, but they have not usually been drawn out in detail. Presented in their right series, they become absolutely decisive, and must conclude the controversy with all candid minds. It is appropriate, at this point of our narrative, to review the argument. In stating the facts which compose it, in their successive relations one to another, some repetition will be necessary; but the highest logic—​mathematical demonstration itself—​is that in which not only the postulates, but the successive proofs most often recur to strengthen the advancing demonstration.

It has been seen that, as before the American Revolution the two countries were under one government, the two Methodist bodies were also. Wesley’s “Minutes” were the discipline of the American as well as the British Methodists; and Asbury represented his person in America, vested with much greater powers than have since belonged to the American Methodist bishops. Thus was the American Church governed for years by the paternal direction of Wesley. It has been further shown that, as none of the American preachers were ordained, the societies were dependent for the sacraments upon the clergy of the English Church in the colonies; that at the Revolution most of these left the country, and the Methodists were thereby deprived of those means of grace; that many societies insisted upon having them without ordination; that a general strife ensued, and a large portion of the Southern societies revolted; that a compromise was effected until they could apply to Wesley for powers to ordain and to administer the sacraments; and that, in meeting their demand, he ordained and sent over Dr. Coke, with episcopal powers, under the name of superintendent, to ordain Francis Asbury a “joint superintendent,” and to ordain the preachers to the offices of deacons and elders. He sent also a printed liturgy, or “Sunday Service,” containing, besides the usual prayers, forms for “ordaining superintendents, elders, and deacons,” the “Articles of Religion,” and “A Collection of Psalms and Hymns.” Coke also bore from him a circular letter to the societies, stating reasons for the new measures, the chief one being the demand of the American societies. When Coke arrived, the preachers assembled in Baltimore to receive him and the new arrangements borne by him from Wesley. The adoption of the provisions thus made by Wesley, at the request of “some thousands of the inhabitants of these states,” is what is called the “organization” of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The “Minutes,” which had before been the law of the Church, were continued, with such additions as were required by these new arrangements. There was no revolution of the Church polity, and no new powers were imparted to Asbury, except authority to ordain. Every thing proceeded as before, except that the American societies no longer depended upon the Church of England for the sacraments, but received them from their own preachers. Thus, then, it appears that the so-called “organization” of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Baltimore was simply and substantially the adoption of the system appointed by Wesley. In respect to the very term “episcopal” itself, the Conference of Baltimore said, in their “Minutes” of the so-called organization, 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.”⁠[802] The Minutes containing this declaration were, six months afterward, in the hands of Wesley, and were published in England without a word of disapprobation from him; and when Coke was attacked in an English pamphlet for his proceedings at Baltimore, he publicly defended himself by declaring that he had “done nothing without the direction of Mr. Wesley.” This he did in a publication, under the eye of Wesley.⁠[803]

It should be frankly admitted, however, that Wesley, while he established the American episcopacy, did not approve the use of the title of “bishop,” because of the adventitious dignities associated with it. But let it be borne in mind that the American societies had been in existence nearly four years under the express title of an “Episcopal Church,” with the uninterrupted approbation of Wesley, before the name bishop was personally applied to their superintendents.⁠[804] Not till this term was so applied did he demur. He then wrote a letter to Bishop Asbury objecting strongly to his being “called a bishop.” And it is on this letter, more than any thing else, that the opponents of Methodism have founded their allegation that Wesley did not design to establish the American Methodist episcopacy, but that Coke and the Baltimore Conference exceeded his intentions in assuming it. Quotations from this letter have been incessantly given in a form adapted only to produce a false effect, for the letter can be rightly comprehended only by the aid of the historical facts of the case.

Did Wesley, then, design, by his ordination of Coke, to confer on him the office of a bishop, and to constitute the American Methodist societies an episcopal Church? Three things are to be assumed as preliminary to this inquiry:

1. That Wesley was a decided Episcopalian. What man was ever more attached to the national episcopacy of England? We have already cited proofs that he believed the “episcopal form of Church government to be Scriptural and apostolical,” that is, “well agreeing with the practice and writings of the apostles,” though that it is prescribed in Scripture he did not believe.

2. That Wesley, while he believed in episcopacy, belonged to that class of Episcopalians who contend that episcopacy is not a distinct “order” (in the usual technical or ecclesiastical sense of the term), but a distinct office in the ministry; that bishops and presbyters, or elders, are of the same order, and have essentially the same prerogatives; but that, for convenience, some of this order may be raised to the episcopal office, and some of the functions originally pertaining to the whole order, as ordination, for example, may be confined to them; the presbyter thus elevated being but primus inter pares—the first among equals—​a presiding officer.⁠[805]

3. That the words episcopos (Greek), superintendent (Latin), and bishop (English)⁠[806] have the same meaning, namely, an overseer.

With these preliminaries, we recur to the questions, Did Wesley appoint Coke to the episcopal office? Did he establish the American Methodist episcopacy? Let us look at the evidence.

1. Wesley mentions, in Coke’s certificate of ordination, as a reason for ordaining him, that the Methodists in America desired “still to adhere to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England.”⁠[807] That Church in America was dissolved by the Revolution; he therefore appointed Coke, with an episcopal form of government, a ritual, and articles of religion, to meet the exigency. If Coke was appointed merely to some such indefinite and contingent supervisory office as “Church” writers allege, if he possessed not the authoritative functions of episcopacy, wherein did his appointment answer the purpose mentioned by Wesley—“the discipline of the Church of England?” Wherein consists the main feature of the discipline of the English Church? In its episcopal superintendence. Wherein does American Methodism resemble it? Certainly not in class-meetings, itinerancy, and other characteristic peculiarities, but in its episcopal regimen. Wesley’s language is without sense if this is not its meaning.

2. Why did Wesley attach so much importance to the appointment if it was of the secondary character alleged? He says in his circular letter respecting Coke’s ordination, “For many years I have been importuned, from time to time, to exercise this right by ordaining part of our traveling preachers; but I have still refused, not only for peace’ sake, but because I was determined as little as possible to violate the established order of the national Church to which I belonged. But the case is widely different between England and America. Here there are bishops who have a legal jurisdiction. In America there are none, neither any parish ministers, so that for some hundred miles together there are none either to baptize or administer the sacrament. Here, therefore, my scruples are at an end!”

Scruples! What could have been his “scruples” about sending Coke on such a secondary errand as the opponents of the Methodist episcopacy assert? He had already sent Asbury and others to America, and to Asbury he had actually assigned such a special yet secondary office, but unaccompanied with the ordination and authority of episcopacy. This he had done years before, without any scruple whatever; but during all this time he had been scrupling about this new and solemn measure, till the Revolution relieved him by abolishing the jurisdiction of the English bishops in the colonies. There is certainly sheer absurdity in all this if Wesley merely gave to Coke and Asbury a sort of indefinite though special commission in the American Church, not including in it the distinctive functions of episcopacy. We can conceive of nothing in the nature of such a commission to excite such scruples—​a commission which had long since been given to Asbury.

Again: When Wesley proposed to Coke his ordination to this new office, some six or seven months before it was conferred, Coke “was startled at a measure so unprecedented in modern days,” and doubted Wesley’s authority to ordain him, as Wesley himself was not a bishop.⁠[808] Wesley recommended him to read Lord King’s Primitive Church, and gave him time to reflect. Coke passed two months in Scotland, and, on satisfying his doubts, wrote to Wesley accepting the appointment, and was afterward ordained, with solemn forms and the imposition of hands, by Wesley, assisted by presbyters of the Church of England. What could have possibly been the pertinency of all these former scruples of Wesley, this surprise, and doubt, and delay of Coke, this reference to ecclesiastical antiquity, and to a book which demonstrates the right of presbyters to ordain bishops in given cases, and these solemn forms, if they related merely to the alleged species of appointment, especially as this very species of commission had already existed for some years in the person of Asbury?

3. It is evident, beyond all question, that Wesley did not consider this solemn act in the subordinate sense of an appointment, but as an “ordination,” using the word in its strictest ecclesiastical application. In his circular letter he says, “For many years I have been importuned ... to exercise this right by ordaining a part of our traveling preachers; but I have still refused ... because I was determined as little as possible to violate the established order of the national Church.... Here my scruples are at an end.” Here the word ordaining is expressly used; and if the new appointment was not a regular “ordination,” but a species of nondescript commission, solemnized by the mere forms of ordination, how could it be an interference with the “established order of the national Church?” How, especially, could it be such an interference, in any important sense different from that which Wesley had already, for years, been exercising without “scruple,” in sending to America his unordained preachers? It was clearly an ordination, in the ecclesiastical sense of the term; but there have been only three ordinations claimed in the Christian world, namely, to the offices of, 1. Deacons; 2. Elders or presbyters; and, 3. Bishops. If, then, Coke was ordained by Wesley, and was not ordained a bishop, it becomes at once a pertinent but unanswerable question, To what was he ordained? He had been a presbyter for years. To what, then, did Wesley ordain him, if not to the next recognized office?

Let it be remembered that Whatcoat and Vasey were ordained elders for America at the time of Coke’s ordination, but by a distinct act. If Coke did not receive a higher ordination (that is, episcopal, for this is the only higher one), why was he ordained separately from them, though on the same occasion? And why did Wesley, in his circular letter, declare to the American Methodists that, while Whatcoat and Vasey were “to act as elders among them,” Coke and Asbury were “to be joint superintendents over them?”

4. Wesley, in his circular letter, appeals to Lord King’s Sketch of the Primitive Church to show that he, as a presbyter, had a right, under his peculiar circumstances, to perform these ordinations. Lord King establishes the second of the above preliminary statements, and the right of presbyters to ordain. And Wesley cites particularly his reference to the Alexandrian Church, where, on the decease of a bishop, the presbyters ordained his successor.

Why now this reference to Lord King and the Alexandrian Church—​proving that presbyters could ordain—​in justification of Wesley’s proceedings, if he did not ordain? And if he did ordain Coke, it may again be asked, as Coke was already a presbyter, To what was he thus ordained, if it was not to the only remaining office—​the episcopacy? And still more pointedly may it be asked, What propriety was there in Wesley’s justifying himself by referring to the ordination of bishops by the presbyters of Alexandria if he himself had not ordained a bishop?

5. Wesley prepared at this time a Prayer-Book for the American Church—​an abridgment of the English Liturgy—​to be used under the new arrangement. It contains the forms for the ordination of, 1. Deacons; 2. Elders; 3. Superintendents; and directs expressly that all preachers elected to the office of deacon, elder, or superintendent shall be presented to the superintendent “to be ordained.” Let it be remarked then, 1. That here the very word ordain is used. 2. We have here the three distinct offices of the ministry stated in order, according to the understanding of Wesley, and of all Episcopalians throughout the world. 3. That not only is the name of bishop changed to that of superintendent, but the name of presbyter, or priest, to that of elder—​the new names being in both cases synonymous with the old ones. If the change of the former name implies a difference in the office also, why does not the change in the latter imply the same? 4. These forms of ordination were taken from the forms in the English Liturgy for the ordination of deacons, presbyters, and bishops, the names of the latter two being changed to synonymous terms, namely, elders and superintendents. The opponents of the Methodist episcopacy readily grant that elder means presbyter, yet, as soon as superintendents are mentioned as bishops, they protest. 5. These forms show that Wesley not only created the Methodist episcopacy, but designed it to continue after Coke and Asbury’s decease; they were printed for permanent use.

6. By reading Coke’s letter to Wesley, consenting to and directing about his proposed ordination, it will be seen that Whatcoat and Vasey were ordained presbyters at Coke’s request, because “propriety and universal practice,” he says, “make it expedient that I should have two presbyters with me in this work.”⁠[809] That is, Coke requests, and Wesley grants, that two presbyters shall be ordained to accompany Coke in his new office, because “propriety and universal practice” require that two presbyters assist a bishop in ordaining; and yet Coke was not appointed to the office of a bishop! Coke in this letter, let it be repeated, requests that these two men should be made “presbyters;” Wesley complies; and yet, in the forms of the Prayer-Book, or Discipline, they are called “elders.” The name only was changed, therefore, not the thing; why, then, is not the inference just, that the other change in these forms, that of bishop to superintendent, is only in the name, not in the thing? The rule certainly ought to “work both ways.”

7. Charles Wesley was a rigid High-Churchman, and opposed to all ordinations by his brother. The latter knew his views so well that he would not expose the present measure to interruption by acquainting him with it till it was consummated. Though Charles Wesley was a presbyter of the Church of England, and in the town at the time, yet other presbyters were summoned to meet the demand of “propriety and universal practice” on such occasions, while he was carefully avoided. Now why this remarkable precaution against the High-Church prejudices of his brother respecting ordinations if he did not in these proceedings ordain? If it be replied that Charles was not only opposed to his brother’s ordaining a bishop, but equally to his ordaining to the other offices of the ministry, and, therefore, the ordinations might have been confined to the latter, and yet such precautions be proper, it may then be asked again, How can we suppose Coke to be now ordained to these lower offices when he had already received them, and had exercised them for years?

8. As soon as Charles Wesley learned these proceedings he was profoundly afflicted. His correspondence with his brother⁠[810] shows that he understood them in the manner that the American Methodists do, and Wesley never corrected this interpretation. He defends himself, but never denies the facts. Charles Wesley speaks of Coke’s “Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore,” alluding to the name assumed by the American Church at its organization in that city. Wesley, in his reply, utters not a word in denial or disapproval of this title, but simply vindicates the necessity of his course in respect to the American Methodists. Charles Wesley, in response, speaks of the doctor’s “ambition” and “rashness.” Wesley, though he knew the Church had been organized at Baltimore with the title of “Episcopal,” and had used the very word “bishop,” but not as a personal title, says, “I believe Dr. Coke as free from ambition as covetousness. He has done nothing rashly that I know.” Charles Wesley, in his letter to Dr. Chandler, a clergyman about to sail for America, speaks of his brother having “assumed the episcopal character, ordained elders, consecrated a bishop, and sent him to ordain our lay preachers in America,” showing thus what the office really was, though the name was changed. Evidently it was only the appellation of bishop, applied to the superintendents in person, that Wesley disapproved.

9. The Conference at which the Church was organized terminated January 1, 1785. The Minutes were published by Coke, with the title “General Minutes of the Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America.” The Minutes, as has been stated, expressly say that the American societies were formed into an Episcopal Church, and this, too, at the “recommendation” of Wesley. By July, Coke was with Wesley at the British Conference. By the 26th of the preceding June, his own Journal, containing this phrase, was inspected by Wesley. Coke also took to England the American Minutes, and they were printed on a press which Wesley used, and under his own eye. The Baltimore proceedings were therefore known to Wesley, but we hear of no remonstrance from him. They soon became known, by the Minutes, to the public; and when Coke was attacked publicly for what he had done, he replied, as we have seen, through the press, that “he had done nothing but under the direction of Mr. Wesley.” Wesley never denied it. How are all these facts explicable on the supposition that Coke and Asbury had ambitiously broken over Wesley’s restrictions?

10. One of Charles Wesley’s greatest fears was, as we have noticed, that the English preachers would be ordained by Coke. He had prevailed upon his brother to refuse them ordination for years. He now writes, with deep concern, that “not a preacher in London would refuse orders from the doctor.” “He comes armed with your authority to make us all Dissenters.” Now, why all this sudden disposition of the English preachers to receive “orders from the doctor,” if it was not understood that he had received episcopal powers, and they despaired of ever getting ordination from the national bishops? If it is replied, they believed, with Wesley, that, under necessary circumstances, presbyters could ordain, and therefore desired it from Coke, not in view of his new appointment, but because he was a presbyter of the Church of England, then it may be properly asked, why did they not seek it before? for Coke had been a presbyter among them for years. Why start up with such a demand all at once as soon as they learned of the new position of Coke? And how could Charles Wesley say in this case, “He comes armed with your authority?” for his authority as a presbyter he obtained from a bishop of the English Church years before he knew Wesley.

11. The term bishop was not personally applied in the Discipline to the American superintendents till about three years after the “organization” of the Church, and Wesley’s objurgatory letter to Asbury was not written till four years after it. During all this interval, however, the American societies were called an “Episcopal Church.” Six months after adopting the name, its Minutes were, as stated, inspected by Wesley, and published under his auspices; they were called the “Minutes of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America;” and they expressly declare 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;” yet, as has been shown, during this long interim Wesley never uttered a syllable against this assumption! When his brother writes him, accusing Coke of rashness, he replies that “the doctor has done nothing rashly;” and when Coke is accused through the press, he declares, under Wesley’s eye, and without contradiction, that “he had done nothing without the direction of Mr. Wesley.” What, now, do all these incidents imply? What but that Wesley did approve the American episcopacy—​that it was established by his direction? Yet four years after, when the appellation of bishop had been applied personally to the American episcopoi, this letter of Wesley was written. What further does this imply? What but that it was not the thing he condemned, but the name? The thing had existed for years uncondemned, nay, defended by him; the very name “Episcopal,” so far as it applied to the Church collectively, he did not condemn; the title “bishop,” as a definition or synonym of “superintendent” in the Minutes, he did not condemn; but the personal title of bishop he disapproved, because of its objectionable associations. Is it possible to escape this inference?

Thus we see that, whatever view we take of the subject, we are compelled to one conclusion: that Wesley did create and establish the American Methodist episcopate. The man who gainsays such evidence must be given up as incorrigible. There can be no reasoning with him.

And now, what is the sum of this evidence? It has already been presented with sufficient detail, but let us retrace the successive and decisive steps of the argument. Here we have Wesley proposing to establish “the discipline of the Church of England” among the American Methodists, and to do so he ordains for them bishops, and gives them an episcopal regimen; yet, according to their antagonists, he never designed them to be a distinct Church, but only a “society” in the Protestant Episcopal Church! Wesley and Coke have “scruples,” delays, references to antiquity, imposition of hands, and other solemn forms, conforming to the “universal practice” of episcopal ordination, and yet all concerning some nondescript kind of appointment, analogous to that which is conferred upon a missionary in charge over his brethren in a foreign station! Wesley speaks of it as “ordaining,” and of his refusing to use the right before the Revolution because it would have interfered with the “established order of the national Church;” and yet a mere secondary commission of Coke, such a one as had existed in the person of Asbury for years, is the momentous interference with the established order of the national Church—​though there was nothing in that order with which it could interfere, the national Church never having had any such appointments! Wesley solemnly “ordains” Coke; and yet it is not to the episcopal office, though he had been ordained to all the other offices to which ordination is appropriate years before! Wesley ordains two other men to the office of elders, and at the same time separately and formally ordains Coke, who had already borne this office; but still Coke’s new office is not the only remaining one that could be conferred upon him! Wesley refers to the ordination of bishops by the presbyters of Alexandria in justification of his ordination of Coke, and yet he does not ordain Coke a bishop! Wesley prepares for the American Church a Prayer-Book, abridged from that of the Church of England, prescribing the English forms for the three offices of deacons, presbyters, and bishops; the two former are admitted unquestionably to be what they are in England, and yet the latter is explained into something new and anomalous, answering to nothing ever heard of in the Church of England or in any other episcopal Church! In these forms the old names of two of the offices are changed to new but synonymous appellations—​that of presbyter or priest to elder, that of bishop to superintendent; in the former case, the change of the name is not for a moment supposed to imply a change of the thing, and yet, in the other case, the change of the name invalidates entirely the thing, without a particle more evidence for it in one case than in the other! Charles Wesley, being a High-Churchman, is kept unaware of his brother’s proceedings till they are accomplished, though he is in the town at the time of the ordination; and yet it is no ordination, but a species of appointment against which he could have had no episcopal prejudice whatever! When he learns the facts he is overwhelmed with surprise, and in his correspondence exclaims against his “brother’s consecration of a bishop,” and “Dr. Coke’s Methodist Episcopal Church” at Baltimore; and Wesley, in his replies, never denies these titles, but simply vindicates his ordinations, and says that Coke had “done nothing rashly;” yet there was no bishop, no episcopal office appointed, no distinct episcopal Church established, but Coke had fabricated the whole! When the preachers in England, trained, from childhood, under episcopacy, hear of Coke’s new office, they are, to the great alarm of Charles Wesley, suddenly seized with a desire to be ordained by Coke, though they fully know that he is no bishop, but the same presbyter that he had been among them for years! In six months after the organization of the American Church, Coke publishes its Minutes, with the title “Methodist Episcopal Church in America,” in London, under the eye of Wesley, and in these Minutes it is declared that Wesley “recommended the episcopal mode of Church government;” but no remonstrance is heard from Wesley! When Coke is condemned through the press for his proceedings, he publicly replies that he had done “nothing without the direction of Mr. Wesley;” no rebuke follows from Wesley, but Coke goes on as usual, active in his Conferences, and maintained in his new position; and yet his American proceedings were an ambitious plot, contrary to the will of Wesley! The American Methodists had borne the title “Episcopal Church,” with Wesley’s full approval, for four years, when, on the use of the personal title of bishop, Wesley writes his letter to Asbury; and yet it is not the mere personal title he condemns, but the office which for four years he had left uncondemned, nay, had vindicated!

And now, looking again at this series of arguments, will not the American Methodists be acquitted of presumption when they assume that they may here make a triumphant stand, surrounded by evidence altogether impregnable? The mighty ecclesiastical system under which it has pleased God to give them and their families spiritual shelter and fellowship with his saints, and whose efficiency has surprised the Christian world, is not, as their opponents would represent, an imposition of their preachers, and contrary to the wishes of Wesley, but was legitimately received from his hands as the providential founder of Methodism.

If Wesley’s strong repugnance to the mere name of bishop had been expressed before its adoption by the American Church, it would probably not have been adopted. Still, the American Church was now a separate organization, and was at perfect liberty to dissent from Wesley on a matter of mere expediency. The Church thought it had good reasons to use the name. The American Methodists were mostly of English origin. The people of their country among whom Methodism was most successful were either from England or of immediate English descent, and had been educated to consider episcopacy a wholesome and apostolical government of the Church. The Church approved and had the office, why not, then, have the name? especially as, without the name, the office itself would be liable to lose, in the eyes of the people, its peculiar character, and thereby fail in that appeal to their long-established opinions which Methodism had a right, both from principle and expediency, to make? The English Establishment having been dissolved in this country, and the Protestant Episcopalians not being yet organized on an independent basis, and the episcopal organization of the Methodists having preceded that of the Protestant Episcopalians, the Methodist Church had a clear right to present itself to the American public as competent to aid in supplying the place of the abolished Establishment, having the same essential principles without its peculiar defects.

And may not the circumstance of the assumption of an episcopal character, nominally as well as really, by the American Methodists, be considered providential? Episcopacy, both in America and England, has reached an excess of presumption and arrogance. The moderate party, once declared by Bishop White, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, to include a large majority of American Episcopalians,⁠[811] has nearly disappeared. Was it not providential, under these circumstances, that a body of Christians should appear, exceeding every other in success, and nominally and practically bearing an episcopal character, without any of its presumptuous pretensions? Amid the uncharitable assumptions of prelatical Episcopalians, the Methodist Episcopal Church stands forth a monument of the laborious and simple episcopacy of the early ages, its success, as well as its humility, contrasting it signally with its more pretentious but feebler sister. It has thus practically vindicated episcopacy as an expedient form of ecclesiastical government, and assuredly it needs vindication in these days.

Such, then, is the evidence which should, with all men of self-respectful candor, conclude decisively the question of Wesley’s design and agency in the organization of American Methodism.

Driven from this ground, objectors retreat to an equally untenable one by alleging that the episcopal organization of the societies in America is to be attributed to the influence of ambitious counselors over Wesley in the imbecility of his old age. It has already been shown that he as yet betrayed no such imbecility; but it has still more conclusively been demonstrated that the ecclesiastical opinions which sanction this great act were adopted in the prime of his manhood. They were the well-considered and fully demonstrated convictions of two score years, before he yielded to the unavoidable necessity of giving them practical effect. Few facts in the history of Methodism are more interesting and instructive than the gradual development of Wesley’s own mind and character under his extraordinary and accumulating responsibilities; it has therefore been studiously traced throughout the preceding pages. No reader who has followed our narrative will accept this last objection to the American Methodist episcopacy, and no possible ground of argument remains for its opponents but the prelatical charge against its legitimacy, founded in the traditional and exploded ecclesiasticism of obsolete ages. Methodists are content, with Wesley, to pronounce the apostolic succession “a fable which no man ever did, or ever can prove,” and believe that, in this age, they need not anxiously challenge any advantage which their opponents can claim from a pretension so incompatible alike with the letter and the charity of the Gospel, as well as with the Christian enlightenment of modern times.⁠[812]

[Attempts have been made to impugn Coke, as having overweeningly led Wesley into this important measure.⁠[813] The charge, however, were it valid, could not affect the validity of the measure itself as genuinely Wesleyan, and as giving to American Methodism an Episcopal organization. After the preceding review, no one can doubt that the whole proceeding was in accordance with Wesley’s own views of Church government. He was, as we have seen, a decided Episcopalian, and he designed to give the American Methodist, as he says, “the discipline of the Church of England;” that is to say, an Episcopal regimen. His appeal to Lord King’s proof, that the presbyters of Alexandria ordained bishops, could otherwise have no relevancy. His use of this proof with Coke, while the latter hesitated, shows what was his original design, and it is impossible to conceive what merely Presbyterian system, without a “superintendency” or episcopate, could at this time fit into the itinerant ministerial scheme of the American Church, where Rankin and Asbury had hitherto been superintendents, though without ordination or the power to ordain.

Whether Coke influenced Wesley or not does not, then, let it be repeated, affect the main question. Whether Wesley was influenced or not, he did construct and solemnly appoint the Episcopal system of the American Methodists, such as it was adopted by the Conference of 1784; he did provide for its perpetuation by abridging, printing, and sending over with Coke the English Liturgy, containing its forms of ordination for the threefold ministerial functions recognized in the Anglican Church, and all these acts were in strict accordance with his long-avowed ideas of Church government.

Coke’s character alone, then, is concerned in this charge. That character, however, is dear to all Methodists, and important, not to the validity, but to the historical character of the American episcopate. He is to stand forever as its first representative. I have elsewhere sketched his remarkable life and character.⁠[814] Though he had essential greatness, he had, doubtless, characteristic weaknesses also. There have been few great men without them. The faults of such men become the more noticeable, either by contrast with or by partaking of their greatness; and the vanity of ordinary human nature is eagerly disposed, in self-gratulation, to criticise, as peculiar defects of superior minds, infirmities which are common to all. Practical energy was his chief intellectual trait, and, if it was sometimes effervescent, it was never evanescent. He had a leading agency in the greatest facts of Methodism, and it was impossible that the series of momentous deeds which mark his career could have been the result of mere accident or fortune. They must have been legitimate to the man. Neither Whitefield nor Wesley exceeded him in ministerial travels. It is probable that no Methodist of his day, it is doubtful whether any Protestant of his day, contributed more from his own property for the spread of the Gospel. His biographer says that he expended the whole of his patrimonial estate, which was large, on his missions and their chapels. He was married twice; both his wives were like-minded with himself, and both had considerable fortunes, which were used like his own. In 1794 was published an account of his missionary receipts and disbursements for the preceding year, from which it appeared that there were due him nearly eleven thousand dollars; but he gave the whole sum to the cause. Flying, during nearly forty years, over England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland; crossing the Atlantic eighteen times; traversing the United States and the West Indies; the first who suggested the organization of English Methodism by Wesley’s Deed of Declaration; the organizer, under Wesley, of American Methodism; one of the first, if not the very first, of Protestant bishops in the Western hemisphere; the founder of the Methodist missions in the West Indies, in Africa, and in Asia, as well as in Ireland, Wales, and England; the official and almost sole director of the missionary operations of the denomination during his long public life, and the founder of the first Tract Society in the world, he must be recognized as one of the chief representative men of modern religious history, if not, indeed, as Asbury pronounced him, “the greatest man of the last century as a minister of Christ.”

Asbury, who hesitated not thus to place him above Wesley “as a minister of Christ,” knew him well, and especially knew him in those transactions for which he has been most blamed. A settled and wealthy clergyman of the Establishment, bearing the highest literary title which its universities could give, a man of high family and high prospects, he forsook, under the influence of deepened religious feelings, all his apparent advantages, to become a wandering evangelist in Wesley’s despised but heroic band of itinerants. He became, as Wesley called him, “the right hand” of the great founder. His spirit flamed with evangelic zeal. He expressed truly his own character in the exclamation, recorded on the high seas, when passing for the first time to America, “I want the wings of an eagle and the voice of a trumpet, that I may proclaim the Gospel through the East and the West, the North and the South.” He seemed almost ubiquitous in the United States, superintending its ministry, and in the United Kingdom, administering the affairs of the Wesleyan Church, founding and conducting its Irish, its Welsh, its “Domestic,” and its Foreign Missions, virtually embodying in his own person the whole missionary enterprise of English Methodism. When an old man of nearly seventy years he conceived the project of introducing Methodism into Asia. He presented himself before the British Conference, and, against great opposition, entreated, with tears, to be sent as a missionary to India, offering to defray the expenses of himself and seven chosen colleagues. The Conference could not resist his appeal, and at length, on the 30th of December, 1813, he departed with his little band, consisting of nine persons besides himself. He died on the voyage, and was buried in the Indian Ocean; but, though the great leader was no more, his spirit remained, and the successful East Indian Missions of Methodism are the sublime results. History should respect the reputation of such a man.

The charge of his leading Wesley into the measures for the organization of the American Church is made in spite of the express testimony of Drew, his intimate friend and biographer, who says that “Wesley, in his study, ‘City Road,’ first divulged his purpose to Coke,” and that, arguing with him there on the ordination of bishops by presbyters in the Alexandrian Church, he concluded by proposing “that, being himself a presbyter, Coke should accept ordination from his hands, and proceed to the continent of America to superintend the societies in the United States.”⁠[815]

A letter from Coke to Wesley, proposing that a messenger should be sent to America to inspect the field and report to Wesley, has been cited as proof of Coke’s overweening wish for such an appointment.⁠[816] The hostile critic seems not to be aware that this letter was written after Wesley’s proposition to send Coke as superintendent. The conversation in Wesley’s London study was in February, 1784. Coke’s letter, proposing a preliminary inspection and report of the wants of the American societies, was not written till the middle of April [“Near Dublin, April 17, 1784”]. It was actually sent while he was yet considering Wesley’s proposition. It showed his hesitancy rather than his eagerness for the new office.

Thus far, then, no solicitation, no selfish management, is apparent in the course of Coke. If, contrary to Drew’s express statement, the particular act of Coke’s ordination by Wesley was by the request of Coke himself, it does not materially affect the question of either the American Church system or Coke’s character. Wesley undoubtedly designed, as we have seen, that the former should be a system of superintendency, of practical episcopacy “conformed to the discipline of the Church of England,” as he expressly says—​such as, in fact, it had hitherto been, except that its superintendents had not yet the function of ordination, which was now to be supplied. If he had not at first designed to ordain Coke (according to his reasoning about the Alexandrian example), it was doubtless because he had assumed that Coke, being already a presbyter, could, in accordance with that example, ordain Asbury a superintendent, and complete the organization of the American Church. Now Wesley had, as we have seen, for years believed in the essential parity of presbyters and bishops, and their equal right to ordain. Coke’s request (if any there were) for more formal authorization by Wesley himself was perfectly correspondent with Wesley’s theory and design, and, this being the fact, it was indisputably expedient, as Wesley himself saw. The agitations and debates among the American Methodists rendered it necessary that he should bear with him the highest possible sanction of Wesley, who was recognized as founder and superintendent of the whole Methodist cause. Coke’s liability to disaffected criticism at home, especially from Charles Wesley (whose opinions were well known), gave him a right to claim, as he did in his letter to Wesley, that the latter should “be obliged to acknowledge that I acted under your direction”—a phrase which would have been inadmissible had not Wesley’s designs corresponded fully with his own. This objection to Coke, then, is not relevant. His course was logical; it was prudent; it was necessary; and its historical results have proved its supreme wisdom.

Almost every other disputed act of Coke’s life has been adduced to confirm the unfounded objection to his course in this great measure. It has been alleged that he wrote to Bishop White, of Philadelphia, that “he would like the Methodists of America to be reunited to the English [American Protestant Episcopal] Church on condition that he himself were ordained to be their bishop.”⁠[817] Coke was already a bishop, and Asbury another, in America; their denomination was already more extended than the Protestant Episcopal Church, and it had an immeasurably better prospect in the new republic. Coke’s impulsive zeal and catholicity led him to think, what many Churchmen, if not Methodists, have since thought, that a union of the two bodies would be a blessing to common Christianity. If he was imprudent, he was nevertheless charitable in his desire. It did more credit to his heart than discredit to his head. He did not propose it, as alleged, in order to be “ordained their bishop.” He included his Episcopal colleague, Asbury, and all his ministerial brethren. The union was to be made “on terms which in no wise compromised the honor or rights of the Methodist Episcopal Church.”⁠[818] “I never did apply,” says Coke, “to the General Convention, or any other Convention, for reconsecration. I never intended that either Bishop Asbury or myself should give up our episcopal office if the junction were to take place.”

It has been alleged against him, as an “unpleasant fact,” and as illustrating his course in the present case with Wesley, that he solicited the “Prince Regent and the government to appoint him their bishop in India,” and this “within twelve months of his lamented death.”⁠[819] This aspersion is founded in incidents connected with that last heroic mission to India above noticed, for which, in his old age, he sublimely sacrificed his property, his episcopal functions in America, and his life, but founded the whole East India Methodist work. The British domination there had, to his eyes, opened a door for the Gospel to all Asia. For some years he had been planning and working for a mission to the Hindoos; the East India Company’s government “had steadily opposed” their evangelization; Coke knew that he could not accomplish his grand designs without authority from the home government in an episcopal appointment; for this reason he sought that appointment. He was still a priest of the national Church, and the Wesleyans were all yet considered as members of that Church. He proved the purity of his purpose when his application failed, for then, as we have seen, he stood, an aged and broken man, before the British Conference, and extorted, by his entreaties, his tears, and the pledge of his own property, its consent to let him go, with a corps of Methodist evangelists, and attempt the great work in the only way that remained for him.⁠[820]

Again, it is alleged that “in 1794 he secretly summoned a meeting of the most influential of the English preachers, and passed a resolution that the Conference should appoint an order of bishops to ordain deacons and elders, he himself, of course, expecting to be a member of the prelatical brotherhood.”⁠[821] The real facts of this case, as in the others, need but to be correctly stated to fully vindicate Coke. Wesley had been dead some three years; the Wesleyans were in the greatest anxiety and distraction respecting their permanent organization during these years; the very existence of the body seemed periled; ministerial disputes and popular agitation prevailed, ending at last in the Kilham schism; the people were clamoring for the sacraments—​the preachers were not empowered, by ordination, to administer them. “At present we really have no government,” wrote Pawson, the president of the Conference, toward the latter part of 1793. “It will by no means answer our ends to dispute one with another as to which is the most scriptural form of Church government. We should consider our present circumstances, and endeavor to agree upon some method by which our people may have the ordinances of God, and, at the same time, be preserved from division. I care not a rush whether it be Episcopal or Presbyterian; I believe neither of them to be purely scriptural. But our preachers and people in general are prejudiced against the latter; consequently, if the former will answer our end, we ought to embrace it. Indeed, I believe it will suit our present plan far better than the other. The design of Mr. Wesley will weigh much with many, which now evidently appears to have been this: He foresaw that the Methodists would, after his death, soon become a distinct people; he was deeply prejudiced against a Presbyterian, and was as much in favor of an Episcopal form of government. In order, therefore, to preserve all that was valuable in the Church of England among the Methodists, he ordained Mr. Mather and Dr. Coke bishops. These he undoubtedly designed should ordain others. Mr. Mather told us so at the Manchester Conference, but we did not then understand him. I see no way of coming to any good settlement but on the plan I mentioned before. I sincerely wish that Dr. Coke and Mr. Mather may be allowed to be what they are, bishops. We must have ordination among us at any rate.”⁠[822] It was in these circumstances that Coke met some of the most venerable and devoted preachers at Litchfield. He “addressed them on the agitated state of the Connection, and the perils which menaced it; he referred to the success of Methodism in the New World under its Episcopal organization, and the relief which Wesley’s establishment of this form of government there had given to a similar controversy. He offered ordination to the brethren who were present. His motive was disinterested, for he already possessed the Episcopal office and dignity, conferred by an authority which they all venerated above that of any archbishop of the realm. Most of the meeting approved his proposition, but Moore, who had been ordained by Wesley, very wisely suggested that they should confine their proceedings to the discussion of its practicability, and defer its decision to the next Conference. He, however, pronounced the measure a scriptural and suitable expedient for the government of any Christian Church. Mather concurred with Moore. They adjourned after adopting a series of resolutions which were to be submitted with all their signatures to the Annual Conference.”⁠[823] It is certainly remarkable that a sinister motive could be imputed to Coke in these circumstances—​to him who had already a diocese co-extensive with the United States of America.

An impartial revision, then, of all the facts directly or indirectly involved in this discussion, results, first, in a vindication of the Episcopal government, adopted at Baltimore in 1784, as the genuine work of Wesley himself, accordant with his previously declared opinions on the subject; and, secondly, of Coke’s conduct respecting it, as also in the other above facts alleged against him. Wesley was just when, after the whole measure had transpired, he declared Coke to “have done nothing rashly,” and that he was “as free from ambition as from covetousness.”]