THE METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW. JULY, 1866. ART. I.-THE SECOND GENERAL CONFERENCE: WHEN WAS IT HELD AND WHAT DID IT DO? Short History of the Methodists, etc. By JESSE LEE. 1810. General Conference Journals, etc. Edited by Rev. Dr. M'CLINтоск. 3 vols. 1855. Articles in the Christian Advocate, etc., January and February, 1859. By Rev. F. S. DE HASS and Rev. Dr. Coggeshall. THE importance which Methodism has attained in America by, at least, its numerical growth, has rendered everything related to its early history interesting to the present generation of its people. Something like a bibliomania for its primitive documents has prevailed among us for the last twenty years, and new books, biographies, "reminiscences," "memorials," historical essays, relics, have multiplied so greatly, that perhaps no leading denomination in the republic has now more abundant materials for the illustration of its early annals. There may be a providential significance in this fact, for the history of the development of a Church or a State must, above all things, include its infancy; and such a genetic history, rightly prepared, so as to exhibit the intimate or interior life of the body, must be among the most effective means of conserving its original spirit and directing its prospective mission-the type and model of its FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XVIII.—21 destiny. What a hiatus would there be in the records of the original Church had not Luke written the "Acts of the Apostles!" And what an advantage to the ecclesiastical world would be the discovery of a manuscript history of the immediate post-apostolic Church, written by Polycarp or Irenæus! How much more precious would it be than the Constantinian production of Eusebius! It cannot be denied that our early Church documents have needed thorough revision. The "fathers" were too intent on work to care much about their records; and, perhaps, they never anticipated the historical importance which time was to give to almost every trace of those records. The early Minutes abound in inaccuracies, not only of orthography in names, but of figures in their returns of members. The date of the first New England Conference, as given by them, is incorrect; and Lee, who was in New England at the time, reproduces the error in his history, though we have conclusive evidence. that the session did not occur at the time appointed, but a year later; that the honor belongs to Massachusetts, not to "Connecticut ;" and that Lee, in cutting the list of conferences from the old Minutes, inadvertently transferred it without correction to his pages. Most of our books have given the honor of the first ultramontane conference to Uniontown, Pennsylvania; but it is now decisively proved (from Asbury himself) that it was held among the heights of the Holston country, and the distinction belongs to that region, where the Church has again organized its first conference, beyond "Mason and Dixon's Line," after the restoration of the Union. Following the Minutes, it was long supposed that Losee, the first regular Methodist preacher to Canada, entered that great field in 1791; and should the Canadian Church propose to celebrate the Centenary of that memorable event, it would, were it to follow the Minutes and our sanctioned histories, make an unfortunate blunder, for it is conclusively ascertained that Losee entered Canada in 1790. Of the very first American Conference we have three dates; and a casual passage from Rankin, in the old Arminian Magazine, has alone, and in our day, determined the question. The more important General Conference of 1784, the most important in our history, as the session at which the "Methodist Episcopal Church" was organized, is reported officially, in its "Minutes" or " Discipline," to have been held " on Monday the 27th of December;" whereas we all know that it was begun on the 24th of December, 1784, and ended on the 2d of January, 1785. And our standard historian, for years, gave, as the Discipline adopted on this great occasion, a copy of a later Discipline, modified and recast in its entire form, and also gave (from Lee's report) the important enactments on slavery (the most extended and most honorable ever enacted by the Church down to 1864) as the supposed "substance of what this conference did in reference to this subject," "though," he says, he "could not find them in the printed Minutes or in the Discipline," from which he quotes the other doings of the session; whereas it is indisputable that these glorious prohibitions were not the mere "substance," but the exact statutes of the first General Conference, and were actually printed in the "Minutes" or "Discipline" a few months after its session, but were suspended and expunged before the edition from which the historian quotes. Such are but examples of the perplexities that beset the student of our early records. There is another example which has occasioned no small controversy in our papers, and which has hitherto remained undecided, though it involves no less a question than that with which we head this article. We have, by order of the General Conference of 1852, a well edited collection of the Journals of that body from the session of 1796; but we all know that there was a session in 1792, and that the great Christmas Conference of 1784 was also a general session. No Journal, however, of either of these sessions remains among the manuscripts of the General Conference archives, and the editor of the ordered work did not feel at liberty to insert in it unofficial accounts of their proceedings. But was the session of 1792 the first held after the Christmas Conference of 1784? Was not the Conference of 1787 (held in Baltimore) a General Conference, and the next held there, in 1788, an adjourned session of the same body? Such is the question which many of our readers will recall, as stoutly debated in the Christian Advocate, New York, in January and February, 1859, by Rev. Mr. De Hass and Rev. Dr. Coggeshall, respectively affirmative and negative in the dispute. The debate was without a satisfactory issue.* It is singular how plausible the argument for the affirmative appears, and yet how decisive that of the negative really is. We can give here but a summary of the evidence, pro and con, not confining ourselves, however, to the two able disputants named, but presenting additional data on both sides. 1. An important fact in favor of 1787 (but not cited we believe, though alluded to, by either disputant) is a letter of Wesley requesting Coke to hold a General Conference at that time. The letter is dated September 6th, 1786, and says, "I desire that you would appoint a General Conference of all our preachers in the United States, to meet at Baltimore on May 1st, 1787, and that Mr. Richard Whatcoat may be appointed superintendent with Mr. Francis Asbury." (See Lee's Life, etc., of Jesse Lee, p. 196, Note.) This is certainly a plausible initiative for the affirmative. Moreover, 2. Coke did, by correspondence, (from the West Indies, we suppose,) invite the preachers to such a meeting. 3. The session of the Baltimore Conference, which had in 1786 been appointed for Abingdon, Maryland, on the 24th of July, 1787, was actually changed, and the body did, in fact, meet in Baltimore on the 1st of May, the day proposed by Wesley. (Lee's History, p. 124.) 4. There was much important business done at this session which properly belongs to a General Conference, according to all our modern ideas of the relations of General and Annual Conferences. Mr. De Hass presents this argument strongly. He says: A glance at the proceedings of this conference will convince any one that it was something more than a mere district gathering. It was at this conference the Discipline was first arranged under proper heads, divisions, and sections. They introduced several new rules and regulations, binding on the whole Church, changed the title of superintendent to bishop, created the office of recording steward, fixed the allowance of traveling preachers with families, * Even our senior bishop supposed, in 1858, that there was a General Conference between the sessions of 1784 and 1792. He says: "If any regular sessions were held in 1788 and 1792 the Minutes were not printed-probably not recorded-and are lost. It is presumable, however, that they were held, and that they were held in the autumn." (Christian Advocate, Dec. 22, 1858.) There can be no question about the session of 1792, and I shall presently give its doings; but the question is about 1788, or rather 1787-8. provided to have the marriages and baptisms properly registered, with other regulations in regard to the instruction and admission of children and colored persons into the Societies. Most of these questions had never been submitted to the district conferences, and were here acted on decisively, and at once became the law of the Church. It was also at this conference that Dr. Coke was arraigned and censured for his abuse of episcopal authority, and that Mr. Wesley's name was dropped from the Minutes after being placed there by the General Conference of 1784, and after that body had solemnly declared that during his lifetime they would obey his commands in matters belonging to the Church." They also elected Freeborn Garrettson superintendent of the work in Nova Scotia and the West Indies, and would have ordained him had he not objected; and they discussed the question of electing and ordaining Richard Whatcoat to the office of bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church, with other grave questions of this character, which certainly would appear ridiculous in a small district conference composed of a dozen members.* 66 Mr. De Hass adds similar evidence to show that the session of 1788 was an adjourned meeting of the supposed General Conference of 1787. These are certainly strong proofs; they would seem almost, if not quite, conclusive of the question, and they show how liable we are, in the obscurity or ambiguity of our Church documents, to fall into mistakes respecting some of our most important ecclesiastical events. But let us look at the other side of the question. 1. Taking together the first three of these arguments, it may be replied that the facts of Wesley's requesting a General Conference, and of Coke's correspondence calling it, and changing the date of the Baltimore Annual Conference for the purpose, are undenied and undeniable. But it must be further replied, that though Coke did these things, presuming on the authority of his episcopal office, and by the sanction of Wesley, yet Asbury and the preachers generally dissented from his proceedings. Coke, on reaching the country in March, 1787, to attend the Conference, says that he was "very coolly "+ received by Asbury; and when they arrived at the Conference he was rebuked severely by the preachers for his change of the time * Mr. De Hass gives further examples; we omit them, however, because the above will suffice, and because the remainder are historically inaccurate, and we cannot now spare space to show their inaccuracy. + Coke's "Journals." London, 1793. |