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Untitled Article
moment they make their sacred functions a stepping-stone to power , they sin against their brethren , their profession , their own souls , and , above all , against their Master , and merit condemnation , not praise . At the same moment they ought also to be checked , if needs be , restrained , and stript of their means of doing harm . At the same moment , we say , for in this , if in any thing , the maxim should be attended to—obsta principiis . In no hands is the growth of power so easy , rapid , and luxuriant , as in those of the
priesthood . Their functions , their character , and their influence , all contribute to help forward any ambitious and sinister designs . Therefore stop them at once , if you wish to stop them at all . If these assertions needed confirmation , it would be found abundantly in the History of Methodism . The rise of Methodism is the rise of the power of the Conference . They have both gone step by step from the earliest period to the present hour , and to see the system of Conference power in its full and oppressive bearings , a retrospective glance is requisite .
Methodism is not yet a century old . It arose in the commencement of the last century as a natural consequence of the scepticism which prevailed in the world , and the indifference which prevailed ia the church . It was nearly cotemporaneous with the revival of Unitarianism ; both were occasioned by the re-action of the public mind ; the fanaticism of Methodism , according to the law by which one extreme begets another , and the simple , rational , and heart-satisfying faith of Unitarian Christianity , as a return of the heart and of the mind to those great principles of belief which are essential to our moral health and our moral comfort .
The circumstances which modified the character of Methodism are to be found in part in Mr . Wesley ' s character . Mr . Wesley was of a warm , susceptible , and enthusiastic temperament . The Phrenologists ought to have found on his head the organs of wonder and veneration fully developed ; the first leading him to magnify unusual circumstances into acts of special providence ; and the second to feel and to
express the sentiments which relate to supernatural powers , ( real or supposed , ) and to the invisible world , in a manner at once energetic , sublime , and overpowering . To whatever proximate cause we may choose to assign it , he was so constituted by nature as to have a strong sense of the mysterious and the invisible , and his life , therefore , was to him a series of miracles and a continued act of devotion . The circumstance of his being ( with
the rest of the family ) rescued from a conflagration was , in his estimation , a special miracle . The remembrance of it left him only with the loss of life . To preserve the fact from oblivion even after his death , he was anxious , and when in the { ifty-nrst year of his age he thought the houT of his dissolution at hand , he ordered the description of himself , ** a brand plucked out of the burning , " which alluded to his rescue , to be engraven on his tomb . He was raised up , he believed , not in the ordinary way of providence , but by God ' s special appointment ; to use the words of the
inscription actually placed on his tomb , " This great light arose by the singular providence of God to enlighten these nations , " &c . Throughout his life , consistently with this illusion , he believed himself acting under the immediate influence of God . This is the tenor of his language , " While I was meeting the bands , my mouth was opened to reprove , rebuke , and exhort , in words not my own . All trembled before the presence of God . 1 was forced to cut oti a rotten member , but felt such love and pity at the time as humbled me unto the dust . "
Untitled Article
Rise (( nd Progress of the actual Pouer of the Conference . 293
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1830, page 293, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2584/page/5/
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