Elliott further concludes:-" It is God who must call men by his Spirit, and then qualify them for their great work. . . . The Spirit calls, gives authority, qualifies the persons called, and blesses their labors. The Church can only discern and recognize the person thus called and qualified. ... Thus far they can go, and no farther." This statement, though so broad and sweeping, is the utterance of one of the chiefs of our Israel, and, having found a place in an official organ of the Church without any sign of dissent, then or afterward, it would seem to have expressed the prevailing convictions of the Church at that time. Here we may also introduce a brief extract from a contemporary Methodist authority, touching this subject: "John Wesley's preachers, being called of God, were as much ministers of Christ, and as much entitled to administer the sacraments of the Church without the imposition of hands, as with it. . . . To contend that the thing itself is necessary would be to condemn the grand old Methodist preachers who flourished from the year 1795, when their administration was authorized by the Methodist Conference, to the year 1836, when for the first time ordination by imposition of hands was solemnly enacted."-TYERMAN'S "Wesley," vol. iii, pp. 448.

Methodist writers who have sought to defend by a logical process, and consistently with ecclesiastical precedents, the ecclesiastical descent of our Church orders, have attempted a difficult task. Just what was Mr. Wesley's theory when he ordained Dr. Coke a bishop, (if ever he so intended,) it is impossible to determine with certainty. He rejected the apostolical succession almost spitefully and with a sneer, as something that he knew to be a fable: and he contended that he was himself as good an episcopos as any man in England. Did he mean that any presbyter of the Church of England was as good a bishop, scripturally, as any bishop or archbishop in the realm? Then was not Dr. Coke such an episcopos before he received his third ordination at the hands of Wesley and his associates? And if Dr. Coke was already a "bishop," by virtue of his or dination to the "priesthood" or eldership, why subject him to another ordination? Possibly Mr. Wesley considered his case an entirely exceptional one, (and with him exceptional meant providential,) so that he was somehow, over and beyond ordinary presbyters of the English Church, raised to a superior

order, as to the Methodist Societies, which, against his own intentions, had now grown to be an inchoate Church. The argument drawn from Lord King's book respecting the practice of the Church at Alexandria fails to meet this case, for that was evidently an independent local Church, which on the decease of its bishop or pastor elected a successor, whom their own office-bearers--such as are now counted laymen-set apart for his office by appropriate forms.

A still better theory would be to say that the episcopacy is, essentially and always, the creature of the presbytery, and that, therefore, it was lawful for Wesley and his clerical associates to originate an episcopacy for American Methodism, (and, as they afterward attempted to do, for British Methodism,) and to ordain Dr. Coke to it. They called him a “superintendent; but he and his associates and successors called themselves bishops; and the whole Church has followed their example. And to all this we make no objection, though we may attach very little value to it. It may have been useful in overcoming a superstitious deference to a mere form, (and so served a good purpose in uniting the distracted Methodist body in America,) but not to give a valid ministry to American Methoddism. Here, again, we may, without any abatement of respect for Mr. Wesley, adopt the words of Mr. Tyerman: "All things considered, this was not surprising, but it was absurd. Great allowance must be made for Wesley; but to reconcile Wesley's practice and profession . . . is simply impossible."

We next turn to the theory and practice of the Methodist Episcopal Church respecting this matter. Until 1840 there does not appear to have been any provision by which a minister coming to us from another denomination could be received in his ministerial character. Probably before that time there had been very few applications. But in that year it was enacted that "Ministers that may come to us from the Wesleyan Connection in Europe or Canada. . . may be received, . according to such [their] credentials." At that time only a few recently admitted Wesleyan ministers had received imposition of hands; and yet any one coming from that body, duly authenticated, was to be accepted as a fully accredited minister of the Gospel. At the same date (1840) a provision was inserted in our Discipline respecting "those ministers who

may offer to unite with us from other Christian Churches," by which they might be received according to our usages, "without the reimposition of hands." This was evidently designed to admit all such ministers to the same ministerial standing with us that they had held among those from whom they came, without any inquisition as to the form, the regularity, or the validity of their former ordinations; though some may have been ordained with the laying on of the hands of a presbytery or association of ministers, others by non-ministerial office-bearers, and still others by the simple recognition of the Church without any special ceremony. Some of the minor Methodist bodies in both Europe and America make no use of imposition. of hands in receiving and sending out ministers; and if from any of these bodies such ministers " offer to unite with us," they are received, unquestioned as to the ceremonies by which they were at first recognized as ministers of the Gospel. Alnost certainly there are now, in the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church, some upon whose heads no hands have been laid in sign of ministerial ordination; but the Church's law accounts them good and valid ministers.

We have used the term METHODISM as the comprehensive designation of all those truly awakened and spiritually renewed persons that became at first the subjects of the great "religious movement of the eighteenth century," and also those who in later times have received the same precious faith. Organically, Methodism includes all of the various ecclesiastical organizations into which those converts have been gathered, and who have maintained the great fundamental element of solidarity, a consolidated churchship with a common pastoratethat is, an itinerant ministry. Wherever these two conditions are found a converted membership and a consolidated ministry-there the essential conditions of Methodism are fulfilled; all bodies that have them are genuine and legitimate branches of the great Methodist family. By distinctness of ecclesiastical individuality, originating from a variety of causes, the number of Methodist organizations have been multiplied, though all of them have, with remarkable tenacity, held fast to the two great essentials; and by the latter all kinds of Methodist bodies are at once identified with the common brotherhood, and contradistinguished from all others. And if, as may

be realized somewhere in the future, all the branches of universal Methodism shall come to formally confess each other in their common relations, these must be the criteria by which they will be recognized.

From an early point in the history of each the two chief bodies of Methodism became specifically unlike in their several forms of ecclesiastical arrangements. British Methodists, having been governed for half a century by the sole authority of one truly great and wonderful man, after his death persistently refused to have any one man raised above the common level of his brethren, in official position or administrative authority; and wherever they have gone forth carrying the Gospel to foreign lands,-in Canada, in Australia, in South Africa, and elsewhere-this peculiarity of their ecclesiasticism has been jealously maintained. And so of all the numerous offshoots from the parent body at home or abroad, all of them pertinaciously assert and maintain ministerial parity, and, as far as possible, insist upon rotation in office, with only brief terms of their service.

In America a somewhat different system was early adopted, which has been steadily maintained, with but slight changes to the present time. Under the advice of Mr. Wesley the American Methodist Church accepted for itself a general superintendency-which has come to be known as an episcopacy-and so the chief body of American Methodists is known as the Methododist Episcopal Church. It is a question of the least possible importance, what is the source of the Methodist Episcopacy? for, unquestionably the men of the "Christmas Conference" were free to order their own affairs, so that the cause of God should suffer no harm; and they put it in their "Articles of Religion" that every particular Church may ordain, change, or abolish rites and ceremonies, so that all things may be done to edification." In the exercise of this right, the fathers of American Methodism "ordained" for themselves an episcopal form of government, and so well has their work operated for "edification," that their sons in the Gospel thankfully confess their good work. And as sons worthy of such a parentage, the Methodists of to-day believe that no part of their birthright has been sold away from them; and as their fathers in the exercise of their Christian liberty "ordained" the Methodist episcopacy, so in the exercise

of some God-given and inalienable rights they still decline to abolish it, but rather elect to preserve it without fundamental "change." And when other and independent bodies have been organized as offshoots from the parent stock, they too have, (most of them, but not all,) provided an episcopacy for themselves. Organic Methodism is founded on, and pervaded by, the idea of ministerial party, because it accepts the great doctrine of a divine call to the ministry. But it also claims. that in the exercise of the authority given by the Head of the Church, his ministers may choose such specific forms of organization as shall seem best adapted to promote the great end for which the Church of God subsists, to wit, to spread scriptural holiness. In doing this the two oldest Methodisms adopted systems varying somewhat in minor and incidental matters; but both retained all that is essential. Both have gone on, side by side, maintaining "the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace," and God has bestowed upon them equal honors in the wonderful success with which he has crowned their labors, and also those of the many kindred and derived bodies of Methodists in both countries, and in foreign lands. And now at the beginning of the last quarter of the nineteenth century Methodism stands forth, girded with divine power and prepared to effect vastly more for the salvation of the world than in all her past.

ART. VII.-GENERAL CONFERENCE OF 1844. DEFENSE OF ITS ACTION IN THE CASE OF BISHOP ANDREW.* As the proceedings of the General Conference in the case of Bishop Andrew were not judicial, its decision has gone forth to the public unaccompanied by the reasons and facts upon which this action was founded. This deficiency is but partially supplied by the published reports of the debate on the subject. The

* In view of the possible discussions that may arise in the next General Conference, we republish the "Reply of the General Conference of 1844 to the Protest by the Southern Delegations against the Action in the Andrew Case." The Protest was by Dr. Bascom, and this reply by Dr. Durbin, as chairman of a committee ineluding, besides himself, George Peck and Charles Elliott. It is a fair refutation of Dr. Myers's book, noticed upon another page.

FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXVIII.-9