Author : James Harrison Rigg
Publisher : Theclassics.Us
Page : 36 pages
File Size : 34,45 MB
Release : 2013-09
Category :
ISBN : 9781230330808
Book Description
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1879 edition. Excerpt: ...compares to Korah and his fellows. But it must be remembered that he regarded ordination by himself, conferred on one of his preachers, as equally valid with any that might have been bestowed by the hands of any bishop of whatever Church. What he objected to in some Smith's Hiitory of Methodism, vol. i., pp. 520, 521. As to American Methodism. 71 of his preachers was that they had presumed to administer the sacraments when he had not appointed them. 'Did we ever appoint you, ' he asks in his sermon, 'to administer sacraments, to exercise the priestly office?' 'Where did I appoint you to do this? Nowhere at all ' In the year preceding the date of the letter from which I have just quoted, Wesley had taken the necessary steps for organising an independent Methodist Church for America. His Letter to Dr. Coke, Mr. Asbury, and our Brethren in North America, is dated September 10th, 1784. In it he expounds his views as to Church government in strict agreement with the extract which I have quoted from the Disciplinary Minutes of 1747, making specific reference to Lord Chancellor King's account of the Primitive Church; andhe closes this letter with the following sentence: 'As our American brethren are now totally disentangled both from the State and from the English hierarchy, we dare not entangle them again, either with the one or the other. They are now at full liberty, simply to follow the Scriptures and the Primitive Church; and we judge it best that they should stand fast in that liberty wherewith God has so strangely made them free.' For which reason, among others, Wesley had no desire, in 1784, that 1 the English bishops should ordain part of our preachers for America.' Nevertheless in 1775, writing to a Tory statesman, Wesley described..