480 History of Methodism 



too fur apart, in local position, to understand well each other's prin- 

 ciples ; and the action has been as if a medical man should bestow 

 all his care on a particular limb to cure a disease of the general 

 system. Now, sir, if I know my heart, I approach this subject with 

 an ardent and sincere desire to contribute something — if ever so 

 little — to the conservation of the whole Church. Plowever wide a 

 difference there may be — and I apprehend there is indeed a wide 

 difference — between my views of slavery, as it exists among the 

 Methodists in South Carolina, and the views of brethren of the 

 North and East, I thank God to know and to feel that this difference 

 of our views has never awakened in me, for one moment, a dispo- 

 sition to inflict the slightest injury on any brother. If I have ever 

 said aught against any one's good name, as a Christian or Christian 

 minister, on account of this difference of opinion, or have cherished 

 in my heart any other than Christian feelings toward any one for a 

 cause which I deem so foreign from the true ground of faith and 

 fellowship, I am not conscious of it. I have considered, sir, that 

 our Church is one, and our ministry one, in spite of these opinions. 

 My honored brother (Dr. Durbin) deprecates involving the North 

 in a connection with slavery; and assumes that such must be the 

 result, if Bishop Andrew is continued in the general superintenden- 

 cy. But I hold, that if the North might be involved in the evil 

 they so much deprecate, for the cause alleged, they are already in- 

 volved by another cause. They are involved by the unity of the 

 Church and the unity of our ministry. I thank God for this unity; 

 a unity which stands not in the episcopacy only, but pervades the 

 entire of our ecclesiastical constitution. We have not one episco- 

 pacy only, but one ministry, one doctrine, one Discipline — every 

 usage and every principle one for the North and the South. And 

 in this view of the matter, I cannot but express my surprise that it 

 should be said (and it has been said by more than one brother on 

 this floor) that if the present measure should not pass it will ex- 

 tend the evil of slavery over the North. It has been declared (and 

 I thank brethren for the declaration) that it is not the purpose of 

 any to oppress the South ; but they insist much and gravely on their 

 duty to protect the North. It is easy to err in the application of 

 abstract principles to practice ; and I must confess that in the pres- 

 ent instance the application appears to my mind to be not only 

 erroneous, but preposterous. What, sir, extend the evil of slavery 

 over the North by a failure to carry the resolution on your table! 

 What is slavery? What new slave would such a failure make? 



