himself to the changed situation, which relieved him of irksome responsibility.

The first Quarterly Conference in America of which we have any account was held at J. Presbury's on the western shore of Maryland, Dec. 23, 1772. Mr. Asbury says:

"We afterwards proceeded to our temporal business, and considered the following propositions:

"1. What are our collections? We found them sufficient to defray our expenses.

"2. How are are the preachers stationed? Brother S. [Strawbridge] and Brother O. [Owen], in Frederick County; Brother K. [King], Brother W. [Webster], and I. R. [Isaac Rollins], on the other side of the bay; and myself in Baltimore.

"3. Shall we be strict in our society meetings, and not admit strangers? Agreed.

"4. Shall we drop preaching in the day time through the week? Not agreed to.

"5. Will the people be contented without our administering the sacrament? J. K. was neuter; Brother S. pleaded much for the ordinances, and so did the people, who appeared to be much biased by him. I told them I would not agree to it at that time, and insisted on our abiding by our rules. But Mr. B. [Boardman] had given them their way at the quarterly meeting held here before, and I was obliged to connive at some things for the sake of peace.

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6. Shall we make collections weekly, to pay the preachers' board and expenses? This was not agreed to: we then inquired into the moral character of the preachers and exhorters. Only one exhorter was found any way doubtful, and we have great hopes of him. Brother S. received £8 quarterage; Brother K. and myself, £6 each. Great love subsisted among us in this meeting, and we parted in peace.

Here the great question of the ordinances, which subsequently came so near producing an early schism in American Methodism, meets us for the first time: Strawbridge appears

* Journal, I. 37, 38. Cf. Stevens, Hist. M. E. Ch., I. 133.

as the earnest advocate of the administration of the sacraments and Asbury falls heir to some difficulties arising from the lax administration of easy Brother Boardman.

At the British Conference of 1772, Captain Webb, recruiting for America, asked for two of the ablest men, Christopher Hopper and Joseph Benson, the commentator. Thomas Rankin and George Shadford were sent and were cordially received by Asbury at Philadelphia, June 3, 1773.*. "Thomas Rankin was one of the commanding men of the Wesleyan itinerancy. Wesley appointed him at once General Assistant or Superintendent of the American Societies, for he was not only Asbury's senior in the itinerancy, but was an experienced disciplinarian; and Wesley judged him competent to manage the difficulties which had arisen under the administration of Asbury, as represented in the correspondence of the latter. Asbury had probably asked to be relieved by such a successor, and welcomed him with sincere gratification." †

Mr. Asbury's plan of extending the work had carried him much into the country districts. To this policy, as we have seen, he steadfastly adhered. “But while he was thus engaged in visiting the plantations and villages, an undue eagerness to extend the work in the towns had unhappily led to a comparative neglect of discipline." Dr. Bangs declares that notwithstanding the vigilance of Mr. Asbury many disorders still existed for which an adequate remedy had not been provided. These things had been communicated to Mr. Wesley, and he therefore clothed Mr. Rankin with powers superior to any which had been vested in his predecessors in office." §

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*Journal, I. 52.

Stevens, Hist. M. E. Church, I. 142. Drew, Life of Coke, p. 61. § Bangs, Hist. M. E. Ch., I. 80. NOTE.-The most important book on this period issued since the publication of the first edition of this work is Dr. John Atkinson's "Beginnings of the Wesleyan Movement in America," of which I have given a full account in The Methodist Review for July, 1896, pp. 430–437. His chief new source is Pilmoor's Journal, covering the entire period of his American labors, and complementing Asbury's account from another standpoint.

CHAPTER V.

THE FIRST AMERICAN CONFERENCE: 1773.

HAT Thomas Rankin, the accomplished disciplinarian of

THAT

eleven years' standing in the British Conference, and Mr. Wesley's General Assistant for America, specially appointed to rectify the American administration and to bring it into harmony with the English model, formed under Wesley's own eye and hand, should preside over the itinerants of the New World in their first Conference at Philadelphia in 1773, was a matter of course. He represented his chief. Mr. Wesley's right of appointment and control was undisputed, and, in the light of all the precedents in which these men had been trained, indisputable. The title of the Minutes of the first formal Conference ever held by Methodist preachers on the continent of America is "Minutes of Some Conversations between the Preachers in Connection with the Reverend Mr. John Wesley." And this continued to be the official heading of the proceedings of the American Conference down to and including the Conference which sat in April and May of 1784. In 1785 begins the series of "Minutes Taken at the Several Annual Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church:" a series which in both branches of Episcopal Methodism has been perpetuated to this day.*

Thus from the beginning in both England and America, Methodism has been a "Connection." The term is technical, and characteristic of the denomination. Connectionalism is of the essence of the system, equally opposed to congregationalism in the churches and to individualism in the preachers. Mr. Wesley, in America no less than in England, was, at the first, the center of union. Connection with

*Minutes, Ed. 1813, pp. 2-49; for important variation, see Ed. 1795 for 1785, 1786, and 1787.

him was the living bond which held incipient American Methodism together. He was the fountain of authority, acknowledged by all as rightful, original, and supreme. Through him a closer organic union subsisted between the Methodism of America, recognized at home as scarcely more than a needy but promising and fruitful mission-field, and that of England, than between the colonies, now on the eve of revolt, and the mother country. Mr. Wesley was the patriarch and apostle, the founder and creator, of Ecumenical Methodism. Mr. Rankin was his American legate or viceroy. He took the President's chair in the first Conference without question and as of right. He directed the business and made the appointments of the preachers.

In St. George's Church, the "Methodist cathedral," in the city of Philadelphia, on the canonical day, Wednesday, July 14, 1773, the first American Methodist Conference assembled: it continued in session three days, adjourning Friday, July 16.* Asbury calls the Conference "General,Ӡ but this was in contradistinction to the Quarterly Conferences hitherto held: the distinction between Annual and General Conferences did not yet exist. The Conference from this time became annual, as to its periodical meetings, and general, as to its representing and supervising and providing for the whole work. Its functions as we shall see were chiefly executive, though, also, under the necessities of the situation of the Americans and the watchful and sufficient authority of Mr. Rankin, partially legislative. Its legislation was of two general descriptions: (1) Declared agreement with, and subordination to, Mr. Wesley and the British Conference in the fundamentals of doctrine and polity; and (2) Special and local rules to guide the administration

*These dates are fixed with certainty by both Rankin's and Asbury's Journals. See A.'s Journal, I. 55. The printed minutes represent it as held in June-this is clearly a mistake, either clerical or typographical. Bangs' and Smith's Histories say July 4, but that day in 1773 was Sunday. Other dates are given by various authorities. Compare Stevens, Hist. M. E. Church, I. 160, footnote.

†Journal, I. 55. Atkinson, "Beginnings," p. iv, argues for the title.

of the American preachers, in the peculiar circumstances in which they found themselves.

The first American Conference, like the first English, of 1744, was composed of ten members, all Europeans, as follows: Thomas Rankin, Richard Boardman, Joseph Pilmoor, Francis Asbury, Richard Wright, George Shadford, Thomas Webb, John King, Abraham Whitworth, and Joseph Yearbry. To all of these we have previously been introduced in these pages save Whitworth and Yearbry: the latter came over with Rankin and Shadford,* and the former was an Englishman who had labored faithfully with Webb and Asbury in New Jersey in 1772,† and was received into full connection at the second Conference in 1774, when Yearbry was also admitted. Boardman and Pilmoor do not appear in the list of appointments, though they tarried in America for nearly six months after the Conference, embarking together for England, Jan. 2, 1774. Politically and ecclesiastically America was becoming somewhat unsuited to their tastes. They were loyal Englishmen and the clouds of the war of the Revolution were now lowering. Rankin, supported by Asbury, who makes some sharp and significant allusions in his Journal, was enforcing rigid discipline on preachers and people alike: and so the worthy pair, who had accomplished much good during their four years' sojourn in America, departed in peace. "Asbury labored hard to conform the American Societies to Wesley's model," remarks Stevens, "but had met with no little resistance from both the preachers and laymen; Rankin had been sent out for this purpose, and to these two thorough disciplinarians we owe the effective organization of the incipient Methodism of the new world. Without them it seems probable that it would have adopted a settled pastorate, and be

*Asbury's Journal, I. 52.

Stevens, Hist. M. E. Ch. I. 203: it is evidently an error, from which the most careful historian cannot altogether free his pages, by which Stevens represents Shadford as laboring in New Jersey in 1772. He did not come over till 1773.