as" traveling bishops,❞—a General Conference of unlimited powers gave rather strong endorsement to the "three order" doctrine, which seems to have been generally accepted among the earliest Methodist Episcopalians. But on this point we shall not linger. Rather may we contemplate the pleasing scene before the General Conference when Coke and Asbury, the "heads of department," were publicly reconciled. They had not met in four years, else the alienation had perhaps been more speedily removed. In 1787, they had been unhappily opposed, and Asbury's policy was adopted. In 1792 Asbury had been the champion of the Council and Coke of the Conference, and Coke's plan had triumphed. Coke had also fallen, Asbury thought, too much under O'Kelly's influence. In 1796 "all past grievances were buried," and "friends at first" were "friends at last." When Coke died, Asbury, who survived him two years, wrote, "He was a minister of Christ in zeal and labors, and in services, the greatest man of the last century."

Colbert confirms Asbury's and Phoebus's account of the cordiality and unanimity of Coke's reception:

Friday, [Oct.] 28. There was much talk about another Bishop, and in the afternoon Dr. Coke made an offer of himself. It was not determined whether they would receive him; but to-day I suppose there were not a dozen out of a hundred that rejected him by their votes. This gave me satisfaction. The afternoon was spent debating whether the local deacons should be made eligible to the office of elder, and it went against them.*

When Coke returned to America in 1797 with the epistle of the English Conference requesting that his obligations to the American Conference should be canceled, of course there was no General Conference in session. But this address was laid before the Virginia Conference then in session, and Asbury assumed the responsibility of a reply, dated from the Virginia Conference, November 29, 1797:

Respected Fathers and Brethren: You, in your brotherly kindness, were pleased to address a letter to us, your brethren and friends in America, expressing your difficulties and desires concerning our beloved brother, Dr. Coke, that he might return to Europe to heal the breach which designing men have been making among you, or prevent its threatened overflow.

* Colbert's Journal.

We have but one grand responsive body, which is our General Conference, and it was in and to this body the doctor entered his obligations to serve his brethren in America. No yearly conference, no official character dare assume to answer for that grand federal body. By the advice of the yearly conference now sitting in Virginia, and the respect I bear to you, I write to inform you that in our own persons and order we consent to his return, and partial continuance with you, and earnestly pray that you may have much peace, union, and happiness together. May you find that your divisions end in a greater union, order, and harmony of the body, so that the threatened cloud may blow over, and your divisive party may be of as little consequence to you, as ours is to us. With respect to the doctor's returning to us, I leave your enlarged understandings and good sense to judge. You will see the number of souls upon our annual Minutes, and as men of reading, you may judge over what a vast continent these societies are scattered. I refer you to a large letter I wrote our beloved brother Bradburn on the subject. . . From Charleston, South Carolina, where the conference was held, to the province of Maine, where another conference is to be held, there is a space of about 1,300 miles; and we have only one worn-out superintendent, who was this day advised by the yearly conference to desist from preaching till next spring, on account of his debilitated state of body. But the situation of our affairs requires that he should travel about 5,000 miles a year, through many parts unsettled, and other thinly peopled countries. I have now with me an assistant, who does everything for me he constitutionally can; but the ordaining and stationing the preachers can only be performed by myself in the doctor's absence. We have to lament that our superintendency is so weak, and that it cannot constitutionally be strengthened till the ensuing General Conference.*

And so Dr. Coke remained in suspense between the importunities of the English and American Conferences until the General Conference of 1800, and the election of his fellow Englishman, Whatcoat, to the joint superintendency with Asbury. But previous to his return and before the meeting of the Virginia Conference, there were some important occurrences which cannot be overlooked.

In the summer of 1797, during Dr. Coke's absence, Asbury began to despair of meeting his episcopal engagements. He accordingly wrote to Jesse Lee requesting him to be in readiness to accompany him from the approaching session of the New England Conference to Charleston and the Southern Conferences, at which, however, as the event proved, Bishop Coke was present, and assisted in the discharge of the episcopal labor. September 12, Asbury

*Drew, Life of Coke, pp. 280, 281.

again writes, appointing Lee president of the New England Conference, and indicating his further intentions:

My Very Dear Brother: I am convinced that I ought not to attempt to come to the Conference at Wilbraham. Riding thirteen miles yesterday threw me into more fever than I have had for a week past. It will be with difficulty I shall get back. The burden lieth on thee; act with a wise and tender hand, especially on the stations. I hope it will force the Connection to do something, and turn their attention for one to assist or substitute me. I cannot express the distress I have had in all my afflictions, for the state of the Connection. We say the Lord will provide. True; but we must look out for men and means. Your brethren in Virginia wish you to come forth. I think the most general and impartial election may take place in the Yearly Conferences; every one may vote; and in General Conference, perhaps onefifth or one-sixth part would be absent. I wish you to come and keep as close to me and my directions as you can. I wish you to go, after the Conference, to Georgia, Holston, and to Kentucky; and perhaps come to Baltimore in June, if the ordination should take place, and so come on to the Eastern Conference.

The reference to ordination is explained by the fact that Asbury had sent a communication to the New England Conference, nominating Lee, Poythress, and Whatcoat for "assistant bishops." But the Conference wisely declined to act, in view of the requirements of the Discipline, and his proposal appears not to have been laid before any other Conference. At the time of writing to Lee, Asbury was sick with "swelling in the face, bowels, and feet" at New Rochelle, N. Y. Afterward he attempted to reach the Conference, but returned and went to bed with a high fever, "distressed at the thought of a useless and idle life." The New England Conference, while refusing to act on Asbury's nominations, gave Lee written instructions to "travel with the bishop, and fill his appointments when the latter could not be present." In his Journal, under date of September 21, 1797, Asbury says:

It is a doubt if the Doctor cometh to America until spring, if at all until the General Conference. I am more than ever convinced of the propriety of the attempts I have made to bring forward Episcopal men: First, from the uncertain state of my health; secondly, from a regard to the union and good order of the American body, and the state of the European connection. I am sensibly assured the Americans ought to act as if they expected to lose me every day, and had no dependence upon Dr. Coke, taking prudent care.

not to place themselves at all under the controlling influence of British Methodists.*

Asbury clearly perceived the value of Wesley's episcopacy to the American connection, and the divisions and disasters which were threatening the English from the lack of it. He feared the lapse of that episcopate in America, and consequent amalgamation with the English, and the possible supremacy of the British Conference in America as well as at home. But in a few weeks his episcopal colleague was by his side, and in 1800 the General Conference legally chose a new bishop. "That he meant well, and nominated wisely in this," remarks a recent author, " none can doubt. If not an abusive procedure, it was liable to abuse."† It must not be forgotten, however, that, notwithstanding the unlimited powers of the General Conference, and the subordinate position of the Yearly bodies, no hard and fast line had yet been drawn in the mind of the Church between the action of the ministry assembled in General Conference, and the action of the ministry generally in the Annual Conferences. Indeed as the action would be taken in either case by the same persons, it is difficult to see how any conflict of authority could arise. As a matter of fact, the Annual Conferences took it upon themselves to alter the time of meeting appointed for both the General Conference of 1796 and that of 1800. And even General Conferences of unlimited powers governed themselves accordingly, for the very persons who composed them, acting in a scarcely distinguishable capacity, had authorized the change. Asbury was destined to be left alone in the episcopacy once more, on the death of Whatcoat in 1806. And, at that late date, when four General Conferences had sat, a measure much more radical, dangerous, and indefensible was initiated in the Annual Conferences, to anticipate the election of a bishop by the General Conference of 1808. But this transaction will be examined at the proper point in our history.

* Journal, II. 292, 293. † McTyeire, Hist. of Meth., p. 470.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE GENERAL CONFERENCES OF 1800 AND 1804.

THE

I. The General Conference of 1800.

HE Conference assembled Tuesday, May 6, and continued in session fifteen days, adjourning Tuesday evening, May 20.* The Journal is attested by the signatures of T. Coke, President, and Nicholas Snethen, Secretary. It is probable that Asbury, on account of his health and the usual precedence he accorded to Coke, surrendered to the latter the presidency of the body. Since that time all the General Conferences of both Episcopal Methodisms have been held in the spring, usually in May.

Asbury records a brief summary of proceedings:

We had much talk, but little work: two days were spent in considering about Dr. Coke's return to Europe, part of two days on Richard Whatcoat bishop, and one day in raising the salary of the itinerant preachers We had one hundred and six- :

for a

from sixty-four to eighty dollars per year. teen members present. It was still desired that I should continue in my station. On the 18th of May, 1800, elder Whatcoat was ordained to the office bishop, after being elected by a majority of four votes more than Jesse

of a

Lee.t

Jesse Lee, Philip Bruce, George Roberts, John Bloodgood, William P. Chandler, John McClaskey, Ezekiel

Cooper, Nicholas Snethen, Thomas Morrell, Joseph Totten, Lawrence McCombs, Thomas F. Sargent, William Burke, and William McKendree, were among the members-" representative men, who laid the broad foundations of Methodism, east, west, north, and south."

The second day of the session, Snethen introduced a resolution, whose preamble recited that though the preceding General Conference had appointed Oct. 20, 1800, for the Gen. Conf. Journals, I. 31, 46; Asbury's Journal, II. 375. †Journal, II. 375.

*

Boehm's Reminiscences, p. 35.