administration. All they have to do is to contribute liberally and submit implicitly to the dictation of their superiors. The preachers have legislated the whole power over the temporal and spiritual concerns of the church out of the people's hands, and into their own. This Wesley candidly avowed as his original intention. In a letter to I. Mason, dated near London, January 13, 1790, "As long," says he, "as I live, the people shall have no share in choosing either stewards or leaders among the Methodists. We have not, and never had

any such custom.

We are no republicans, and never intend to be. It would be better for those that are so minded to go quietly away." Accordingly, when, in 1797, the people in some parts of England began to take the alarm, and petitioned in large numbers, "that they might have a voice in the formation of their own laws, the choice of their own officers, and the distribution of their own property" (see Buck's Theological Dictionary, art. Methodists), the love of power conquered the sense of right, and these petitioners were denied those privileges, which both reason and Scripture teach every man are the fundamental principles of all freedom, civil as well as religious. In this country, too, the free spirit of our civil government has extended its reforming hand to the oppressions of religious tyranny. A large and respectable body of Methodists have begun to feel and act like Christian freemen. The rights and privileges for which they have been contending, are the same for which their brethren in England petitioned in 1797. And how have their efforts toward emancipation been received? Just as might have been expected from a clerical aristocracy which holds all the power in its own hands, and wields the sword of discipline agreeably to its sovereign pleasure. The advocates of the people's rights were excommunicatedcommunicated for insisting upon those very rights in ecclesiastical matters, for which, in state policy, our fathers fought and bled in the great revolutionary struggle, viz. "A voice in

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making their own laws, electing their own rulers, and distributing their own property."

To these statements it has been replied, "that as every preacher, before he can be admitted by the conference, must be recommended by the laity, and as the conference cannot move a single step toward his admission, without such recommendation, it follows that the laity are the origin and source of all power in the church." But Dr. Bangs, in the Appendix to Buck, informs us that "a person thinking himself moved by the Holy Ghost to preach the gospel, first makes known his views and exercises to the preacher having charge of the circuit, who, if he considers the applicant a fit person (here is the origin of all power), grants him license to exhort," &c. Besides, if it were correct that the laity must recommend the candidate to the Conference before he can be received, it would be a marvelous proof of their holding all the power in their hands, because, forsooth, a man who wishes to turn preacher, must get a few of his friends to recommend him! The quarterly conferences, it is further said, are composed partly of laymen; and these bodies are the door of entrance to the ministry, &c. But these laymen, according to Dr. Bangs, "are the stewards, leaders and exhorters" of the circuit, appointed directly or indirectly by the preachers, and of course are completely under the control of their originators.

Indeed, we may fearlessly affirm that there is not a form of church government on earth (the Papacy excepted), so radically opposed to republicanism as Methodism. The legislative, executive and judicial powers are all placed in the hands of a privileged aristocracy - the preachers; and at their sovereign nod, both men and money are disposed of, to promote whatever purposes piety, ambition, proselytism, or whim, may dictate.

In proof of these statements, the Rev. Professor S. S. Schmucker, of the Lutheran church, himself a decided Arminian, has collected from the "Discipline" the following "s of this clerical usurpation :

1. "The exclusive right of suffrage in the election of delegates to the general conference and of bishops." A thing unknown in any other Protestant church.

2. "Exclusive eligibility both to the annual and general conferences." In all other Protestant churches, laymen are eligible to the church courts.

3. "The exclusive unlimited power to legislate for the whole church in matters of doctrine, discipline, and forms of worship and minor regulations." The traveling preachers can change and reverse whenever they please, every item of doctrine,* discipline and forms of worship; and no layman, nor even local preacher, can have a word to say in it.

4. "The exclusive right to sit in judgment on the moral conduct of traveling preachers." In other churches such trials are conducted by laymen and ministers jointly.

5. "The exclusive right of appointing all committees for the trial of lay members, without the power on the part of the accused to challenge any member of such committee, though he could prove him his bitterest enemy.

6. "The exclusive right to conduct and control the book concern, and appropriate its extensive profits exclusively to their own benefit.

7. "The exclusive right of eligibility to the editorship of the periodicals of the Methodist church: local preachers and laymen are excluded by the Discipline.

8. "The exclusive right to hold and control all the Metho* It may perhaps be questioned, whether the preachers have power, according to the Discipline, to change the doctrines of the Methodist church. It is admitted that among the provisions for altering and amending the Book of Discipline, it is said, "excepting the first article," which relates to doctrine. But cannot the same power which inserted that exception strike it out? Cannot a majority of the General Conference erase that exception whenever they please? The way is then open to abolish every doctrine of the system, and substitute in its stead any other ism which pleases them best. The people are therefore absolutely dependent upon the preachers, whether the Methodist Episcopal church is Universalist, Socinian, or Popish, in her doctrinal testimony!

dist churches and parsonages, deeded according to the Discipline to say who shall and who shall not occupy them, without consulting the wishes of the laity who paid for them. Even the trustees are nominated exclusively by the traveling preachers. In every other Protestant church in the land, each congregation has control of its own parsonage and church property.

9. "The exclusive right to fix their own salary, that is, the amount to which they may retain possession of their collections, and receive dividends from the several funds. In every other church, the people decide for themselves what sum they will allow their minister.

10. "The exclusive right of their bishops to determine what minister each congregation shall have, without consulting the wishes of the people. In all other churches of our land, the congregation invites the person they think best suited to them.

11. "An entire irresponsibility to the people for all their acts, legislative, judicial and executive, and for the distribution of the extensive funds possessed by them; no power on earth can call them to account." Thus far Dr. Schmucker. We are now prepared to understand Dr. Bangs, when he asserts in his "Vindication"-" Every part of our government is elective." But who are the voters? The reverend clergy. And is not the Pope elected by his reverend cardinals?

In concluding this Letter, we remark, that some difference of opinion appears to exist among the leaders of Methodist Episcopacy. Messrs. Bangs and Emory say, "their church government is in fact and name episcopal;" and Dr. Emory adds: "In whatever sense distinct ordinations constitute distinct ORDERS, in the same sense Mr. Wesley certainly intended that we should have three orders." But Dr. Bond, senior, affirms that "the episcopacy is NOT a distinct ministerial order, but only a superior office; and that is the light in which it has always been considered." Now, in the language of Dr. Mus

grave, "if nothing more is meant by their distinct 'episcopal' ordination, than the giving of the power of general superintendence, why talk about their three orders, and their due 'order and succession !!'-If men will be guilty of such nonsense, they must expect to be laughed at for their simplicity; and by none more heartily than Episcopalians themselves, whose forms they so absurdly imitate."

As to the fact that the preachers have all ecclesiastical power, executive, legislative and judicial, in their own hands, it is "a bad eminence" which all right-thinking men should shun, for their own sakes, as well as for the liberty and security of the laity.

LETTER XVII.

PREACHER USURPATIONS-CONTROL OF PROPERTY-AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE "THE WORK OF THE DEVIL."

REV. SIR-In the list of clerical exactions stated by Prof. Schmucker, there is one item that requires a separate consideration:

XII. THE DIFFICULTIES OF EPISCOPAL METHODISM, IN RELATION TO CERTAIN RIGHTS OF PROPERTY.

In all other denominations, with the single exception of Popery, when a congregation build a house of worship, it is their own to all intents and purposes. Not so, however, in Methodist Episcopacy; for the preachers require all such valuable interests to be deeded to them and placed entirely beyond the control of the original owners. It is true the form of deed in the Discipline (p. 176) conveys the property to trustees in the first instance-but mark! It is "in trust that they shall build a house or place of worship for the use of the members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States, according to the rules and discipline which, from time