"I have accordingly appointed Dr. Coke and Mr. Francis Asbury to be joint superintendents over our brethren in North America; as also Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey, to act as elders among them, by baptizing and administering the Lord's supper. And I have prepared a liturgy little differing from that of the Church of England (I think the best constituted national church in the world), which I advise all the travelling preachers to use on the Lord's day, in all the congregations, reading the litany only on Wednesdays and Fridays, and praying extempore on all other days. I advise, also, the elders to administer the supper of the Lord, on every Lord's day.

"If any one will point out a more rational and scriptural way of feeding and guiding these poor sheep in the wilderness, I will gladly embrace it. At present, I cannot see any better method than that I have taken.

“It has, indeed, been proposed to desire the English bishops to ordain part of our preachers for America. But to this I object: 1. I desired the bishop of London to ordain one, but could not prevail. 2. If they consented, we know the slowness of their proceedings; but the matter admits of no delay. 3. If they were to ordain them now, they would expect to govern them hereafter. And how grievously would this entangle us! 4. As our American brethren are totally disentangled both from the state and 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. JOHN WESLEY."

This letter proves: (1.) That the office to which Dr. Coke had been ordained, and Mr. Asbury had been appointed by Mr. Wesley, was superior to the office of a presbyter or elder; else why ordain Dr. Coke, when he had been for years in

THE TERM "BISHOP."

263

vested with full presbyterial powers by the Church of England? On a contrary view of the case, the ordination of the doctor by Mr. Wesley must have been a mere farce got up for the occasion. (2.) The letter proves that Mr. Wesley esteemed the liturgy of the Church of England above any other form of service; and that, in providing for the wants of an infant connection, he, in fact, prepared the same for the worship and government of said connection. (3.) The "Liturgy”—or Sunday Service, as it is sometimes called-thus prepared by Mr. Wesley, contained three distinct services of ordination, namely, for deacons, elders, and superintendents; and to suppose that he would thus provide for the three-fold consecration of the highest officers of the church; and yet not intend the existence of such an office as the episcopate, either in name or fact, is a supposition at once so absurd as scarcely to demand notice. If, however, it be objected, that Mr. Wesley did not use the term bishop in said liturgy, but the term superintendent, and therefore he could not mean bishop; we have only to reply, that both the terms mean one and the same thing—an overseer and that if the fact of his dropping the use of the name bishop, is evidence that he disapproved of the office in the American Church, so the erasure of the term presbyter, or its contraction priest, from his liturgy, and the substitution of the word elder, is evidence that he disapproved of the office of a presbyter in the same church; and yet nothing is more certain than that he provided for the latter office.

It is true that Mr. Wesley disliked the use of the term presbyter, when applied to his preachers, and for the same reason he disapproved of the use of the term bishop, when applied to the General Superintendents of the Methodist Church. He also disliked the use of the term College, as applied to a Methodist literary institution, and preferred the less pretending name of School; but can we from these facts infer that John Wesley-himself a presbyter-did not believe in the office of a presbyter? or that he did not believe in the utility or law

fulness of colleges? The idea is perfectly preposterous. The fact is, that Mr. Wesley was opposed to the application of tho terms bishop and presbyter to his ministers in America, while he was more than willing that they should fill the offices designated by such titles, under the more unassuming names of superintendent and elder. This, however, was a mere matter of scrupulous taste with Mr. Wesley, rather than anything else -a fault, if fault it was, which certainly may well be forgiven. him, in view of the gross abuses of the titles and offices by some of the dignitaries of the Romish Church, and her daughter, the Church of England.

Let it be remembered, too, as stated in Section I. of this chapter, that the Methodist Church in the United States had been organized as an Episcopal Church for more than six years. prior to the death of Mr. Wesley; that the minutes of the conference which organized the church as an Episcopal church, together with all the facts and circumstances, were well known to him, and submitted to him for his approval by Dr. Coke; and that not a single word of disapprobation, either in reference to the Doctor's action in the premises, or to the name and title of the church, was spoken or written by Mr. Wesley, and we have proof of the most convincing character, that Mr. Wesley did design our form of church government to be Episcopalian; and that the fathers and founders of our church polity, did not deceive, when they proclaimed upon the page of the Book of Discipline, that Mr. Wesley, "preferring the Episcopal mode of church government to any other, solemnly set apart Thomas Coke for the Episcopal office, and directed him to set apart Francis Asbury for the same office." These, then, being facts, we are prepared to claim John Wesley as the originator of American Episcopal Methodism.

But aside from these considerations, we claim that even if Mr. Wesley had not provided an Episcopal form of government for the American Methodists, the latter, when constituted an independent church, had a scriptural right to choose such a

RIGHT OF CHURCHES TO CHOOSE THEIR OWN FORMS. 265

form of government as was best suited to their circumstances and condition. If it is a fact, according to the XXXIV. Article of the Church of England, and the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, that "Every particular or national church, hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish ceremonies or rites of the church, ordained only by man's authority, so that all things be done to edifying." If it is a fact, in the language of the same Article, that "It is not necessary that traditions and ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly alike; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men's manners, so that nothing be ordained against God's word;" if, we repeat it, these are facts, then had the Methodist Episcopal Church a scriptural, and even canonical right to ordain such rites and ceremonies as seemed good to her. We say she had a canonical right to do so; that is, allowing that before her independence she was considered an integral part of the Church of England, the 34th Article of that church gave her the right to ordain, change, and abolish such ceremonies and rites as had been ordained by merely human authority.

That the terms “rites," "traditions," and "ceremonies," do not mean merely the form of church service, which a church at its pleasure may adopt, is evident from the fact that the same Article asserts that he who doth purposely and openly break the same, through private judgment, offends against the common order of the church, and “hurteth the authority of the magistrate." Now it cannot be supposed that a mere deviation on the part of an individual from the prescribed form of church service, would be hurtful to the authority of the magistrate, for, 1st, the magistrate has no scriptural authority in the matter whatsoever, and 2dly, it would be beneath the dignity of the subject to suppose that the Article refers to the authority of the magistrate to prescribe how many and what prayers a man shall repeat in his attempts to worship God. The only reasonable meaning which can be attached to this language is,

that when, by common authority, a certain form of ecclesiastical government is established in any church, no individual may, of his own private judgment, purposely violate the rules and requirements of such established order of things, while a body of Christians living in a foreign land, and subject to no ecclesiastical jurisdiction whatsoever, may "ordain, change and abolish” such usages and forms as they please. To illustrate this point clearly had Mr. Wesley ordained ministers for the Church of England, he would have been a transgressor of the doctrine taught in the Article. Had he made the attempt to ordain Dr. Coke as a bishop of the establishment, he would have exposed himself to the open rebuke of his ecclesiastical superiors. But Mr. Wesley attempted no such thing. He simply made provision for the proper organization of an independent foreign church, and that church, availing itself of the privilege given to establish itself on any basis it chose, adopted such a mode of government as the exigencies of the case demanded, and the above Article allowed. It should be remembered, too, that the Methodist Episcopal Church was duly organized, while as yet there was no other independent Protestant Episcopal Church in America, the body of Christians now bearing that name not having been duly organized, till several years after the Methodist Church had been in being, and was known and acknowledged by the civil authorities of the nation as an independent ecclesiastical body, having its own bishops, its own ministry, its own membership, and all other things requisite to its proper organization. So far, then, as authority could be given by the Articles of Religion of the Church of England, the organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church was not only scriptural, but canonical.