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Untitled Article
cancelled the writings , and took the whole management respecting the building into his own hands , believing , as he had said , that the earth was the Lord ' s and the fulness thereof , and * in his name he set out , nothing doubting . This mistake being corrected , he never made another in a similar matter . Of every chapel that was built , he took care to be the sole legal proprietor , and on his death the power which hence accrued to him , he left , with all his other claims on the Methodist body , to the one hundred persons whom he constituted the Conference . It would have been in vain for his
converts at Bristol to have demurred . The money by which the " preaching-house" had been built , was not raised by them , but begged by Wesley , They were as ignorant as they were poor , and on both these accounts were as powerless as a man of Wesley's temperament would have desired . In the erection of other places of worship also , the ignorance and poverty of the people tended to forward the views of the great high priest ; and long before there existed in the body the elements of an opposition , usage had sanctioned what usurpation commenced .
Thus , in consequence of peculiarities in his own character , and in consequence of peculiarities in the condition and circumstances of those with whom he was thrown into connexion , John Wesley acquired a power to which there is no parallel since the days of Loyola . While he lived , he ruled sole and supreme over the Methodist body in this kingdom , and at the approach of his dissolution , he devolved all his power to one hundred preachers of his own nomination . And here a circumstance occurs to our
memory , which shews partly the extent of his power , and partly the extent of his self-estimation . After he had executed the deed by which he vested all that was his in " the hundred , " it was urged upon him that these persons might become the oppressors of their brethren , that is , not the people , for of their rights no thought was taken , but the priesthood . This danger he felt . What did he to prevent it ? Did he revoke the deed and substitute
another ? He thought it sufficient to express his solemn wish that " you will never avail yourselves of the deed of declaration to assume any superiority over your brethren . " This wish was in part , and only in part , attended to . From Wesley the power of which we have spoken passed over to the hundred . " The survivors and the successors of these persons have all the legal power , and a few out of them— " a faction , " as some
Methodists themselves term them , exercise all the actual power . From a monarchy , the government of the Methodist body has become an oligarchy . At the present moment , the power exercised is all but equally great with that which Wesley himself enjoyed . The only difference is—a difference , as far as the people are concerned , for the worse—instead of one master there are now several .
But the opposition which the people made , and the liberties which they exacted , the secessions which the dissatisfied ( and justly ) have been forced into , together with the recent arbitrary conduct of the preachers , and the actual condition of the body , must be reserved till another opportunity .
Untitled Article
296 Wesley transfers his Power to One Hundred Preachers .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1830, page 296, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2584/page/8/
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