In South Carolina. 507 



then constituted, were the novel and dangerous doctrines practically 

 avowed and indorsed by that body, and the Northern portion of the 

 Church generally, with regard to the Constitution of the Church, 

 and the constitutional rights and powers respectively of the episco- 

 pacy and the General Conference. In relation to the first, it was 

 confidently, although most unaccountably, maintained that the six 

 short restrictive rules which were adopted in 1808, and first became 

 obligatory as an amendment to the Constitution in 1812, were in fact 

 the true and only Constitution of the Church. This theory assumes 

 the self-refuted absurdity that the General Conference is, in fact, the 

 government of the Church, if not the Church itself. With no other 

 constitution than these mere restrictions upon the powers and rights 

 of the General Conference, the government and discipline of the 

 Methodist Episcopal Church, as a system of organized laws and well- 

 adjusted instrumentalities for the spread of the gospel and the dif- 

 fusion of piety, and whose strong principles of energy and action 

 have so long commanded the admiration of the world, would soon 

 cease even to exist. The startling assumption that a bishop of the 

 Methodist Episcopal Church, instead of holding office under the 

 constitution and by tenure of law, and the faithful performance of 

 duty, is nothing in his character of bishop, but a mere officer at will 

 of the General Conference, and may accordingly be deposed at any 

 time with or without cause, accusation, proof, or form of trial, as a 

 dominant majority may capriciously elect, or party interest suggest, 

 and that the General Conference may do by right whatever is not 

 prohibited by the restrictive rules, and with this single exception 

 possess power supreme and all-controlling; and this in all possible 

 forms of its manifestation, legislative, judicial, and executive, the 

 same men claiming to be at the same time both the fountain and 

 functionaries of all the powers of government, which powers, thus 

 merged and concentrated into a common force, may at any time be 

 employed at the prompting of their own interest, caprice, or ambi- 

 tion. Such wild and revolutionary assumptions, so unlike the faith 

 and discipline of Methodism, as they had been taught them, the 

 Southern Conferences were compelled to regard as fraught with 

 mischief and ruin to the best interests of the Church, and as fur- 

 nishing a strong additional reason why they should avail them- 

 selves of the warrant they then had, but might never again obtain 

 from the General Conference, to establish an ecclesiastical connec- 

 tion, embracing only the Annual Conferences in the slave-holding 

 States. The whole constitutional argument, and indeed all the rea- 



