482 History of Methodism 



another ministry for the South; but one, and one only, for the whole 

 Church. And I cannot pass from this point without thanking 

 Brother Green for his remarks, so fitly made with respect to this 

 matter; the force of which, I am persuaded, cannot possibly be 

 thrown off from this great question. Is the episcopacy for the 

 whole Church? So is the ministry. And if the fact that a bishop 

 is connected with slavery in the South, requires him to be suspended 

 because he cannot, while so connected, exercise his functions accepta- 

 bly at the North, the sarne must be concluded of the ministry ; 

 which, as one for the whole Church, and having equal constitutional 

 competency for the North or the South indifferently, must, in the 

 same involvement as the bishop, become subject to like disability. 

 Nor does the interference stop here, but it extends to the privileges 

 of the membership of the Church, as well as the ministry. The 

 wound inflicted by this thrust at the bishop goes through the entire 

 Church. We are everywhere one Church — one communion. And 

 may you refuse the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, or admission to 

 a love-feast, to a member of the Church in Charleston, whose busi- 

 ness may carry him to Boston, because in Boston you will have no 

 connection with slavery? Admit, then, the principle assun»ed on 

 the other side, and to what confusion will it not lead you? First, 

 the bishop must surcease his functions. He may not be allowed to 

 exercise them even in the slave-holding States ! Next, the ministry 

 in the South must be declared incompetent to go North. Next, they 

 miy not be allowed to minister at all, for fear of contaminating the 

 immaculate North by their ministry as Methodists among the defile- 

 ments of the South. And next (and by the easiest gradation), our 

 people may be told that communicants at the South may not be com- 

 municants at the North, and cannot be received as such. 



It has been said that the course of aggression from the beginning 

 has been from the South toward the North, and not from the North 

 toward the South. 



(Dr. Durbin interposed: "Dr. Capers misapprehends me. I said 

 the course of concession, not aggression, had been from the North 

 to the Southland not from the South to the North.") 



Dr. C. I understood the idea to be, that in the conflict on the 

 subject of slavery, the North has been giving up to the South, and 

 the South encroaching on the North. 



(Dr. D. "My words were, that the history of the legislation was 

 a constant concession from the North to the South. That was all I 

 said, and all I wished to say.") 



