CHAP. II. SHALL WESLEY'S POWERS DESCEND TO THE CONFERENCE OR TO A Designated SuccessOR?....... CHAP. III. DR. COKE AND the Deed of DECLARATION.. 71 Fན8 94 CHAP. VIII. Peace and PROSPERITY: 1781-1784.... CHAP. IX. THE DOCTRINAL Standards of Ecumenical MethoDISM. 13 CHAP. ... THE DELEGATED GENERAL CONFERENCES OF THE UNDIVIDED METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. XX. THE THird DelegateD GENERAL CONFERENCE, AND MR. SOULE'S FIRST ELECTION TO THE EPISCOPACY, 1820..... .... 338 XXI. THE QUADRENNIUM, 1820-1824: THE CONTRASTED Gov. ERNMENTS OF THE TWO EPISCOPAL METHODISMS.... 364 CHAP. XXII. THE FOURTH AND FIFTH DELEGATED GENERAL CON- 381 CHAP. XXIV. THE EIGHTH Delegated GENERAL CONFERENCE, 1840. 415 CHAP. XXV. The General Conference of 1844: the Louisville I. CRITICAL DESCRIPTIVE Catalogue of All the Editions of the III. FURTHER Remarks ON THE CONSTITUTION OF 1808... IV. THE CONSTITUTIONAL VALIDITY OF THE PLAN OF SEPARATION... 492 BOOK I. ENGLISH METHODISM TO 1784. I. ORIGIN OF THE CONFERENCE. II. SHALL WESLEY'S POWERS DESCEND TO THE CONFER ENCE OR TO A DESIGNATED SUCCESSOR? III. DR. COKE and the Deed of DECLARATION. (13) CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF AMERICAN EPISCOPAL METHODISM. CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THE CONFERENCE. SINC INCE 1744 the two constant factors of Methodist polity, (1) a superintending and appointing power, and (2) a consulting body called the Conference, have been continuously operative. These two factors are constitutional or elemental in the government of Methodism. The system itself changes as either of these elements changes or is variously combined with the other: the disappearance of either is the destruction of the system. Something better might take its place, but it would be also something different. The peculiar economy of Methodism would cease to exist. The origin, development, history, and relations of these two factors, the former chiefly executive and the latter chiefly legislative, afford the principal, if not exclusive, materials for a constitutional history of Methodism, a task not hitherto accepted as the express province of any single work. It need hardly be added that our inquiry concerns itself altogether with polity and government and not at all with dogma and doctrine. With the development and definition of the powers and prerogatives of the Conference, with its President, Secretary, other officers, and committees, in English Methodism, |