1. A suitable and convenient arrangement of things, proceedings or ideas; the natural or regular disposition of separate things or parts; convenient order for transacting business, or for comprehending any complicated subject. Without method business of any kind will fall into confusion. To carry on farming to advantage, to keep accounts correctly, method is indispensable.
2. Way; manner. Let us know the nature of the disease, and the method of cure.
3. Classification; arrangement of natural bodies according to their common characteristics; as the method of Theophrast; the method of Ray; the Linnean method
4. In natural arrangements a distinction is sometimes made between method and system. System is an arrangement founded, throughout all its parts, on some one principle. method is an arrangement less fixed and determinate, and founded on more general relations. Thus we say, the natural method and the artificial or sexual system of Linne, though the latter is not a perfect system.
1. An orderly procedure or process; regular manner of doing anything; hence, manner; way; mode; as, a method of teaching languages; a method of improving the mind.
2. Orderly arrangement, elucidation, development, or classification; clear and lucid exhibition; systematic arrangement peculiar to an individual.
3. Classification; a mode or system of classifying natural objects according to certain common characteristics; as, the method of Theophrastus; the method of Ray; the Linnaean method.
Arranged in convenient order; disposed in a just and natural manner, or in a manner to illustrate a subject, or to facilitate practical operations; as a methodical arrangement of the parts of a discourse or of arguments; a methodical treatise; methodical accounts.
1. Arranged with regard to method; disposed in a suitable manner, or in a manner to illustrate a subject, or to facilitate practical observation; as, the methodical arrangement of arguments; a methodical treatise.
2. Proceeding with regard to method; systematic.
3. Of or pertaining to the ancient school of physicians called methodists.
THE history of Wesleyan Methodism embraces—(1) the Methodism of Oxford, which was strictly Anglican and rigidly rubrical, though it was also more than rubrical; (2) the evangelical Methodism of the Wesleys after their conversion (in 1738), of which the Wesleyan doctrines of conversion and sanctification were the manifesto and inspiration, while preaching and the class-meeting were the great motive and organizing forces,—a movement which before Wesley’s death had developed into a form containing, at least in embryo, all the elements of a distinct church organization, although in its general designation and deliberate claims it purported to be only an unattached spiritual society; and (3) Wesleyan Methodism since the death of Wesley, which, by steps at first rapid and afterwards, though leisurely, distinct and consecutive, assumed an independent position, and has grown into complete development as a church....
1. Oxford Methodism.— This began in November 1729, when John Wesley, returning to Oxford from Lincolnshire, where he had been serving his father as curate, found that his brother Charles, then at Christ Church, had induced a few other students to join him in observing weekly communion. John Wesley’s accession lent weight and character to the infant association. Their first bond of association, besides the weekly communion, was the common study of the Greek Testament, with which they joined regular fasting, the observance of stated hours for private devotion, the visitation of the sick, of the poor, and of prisoners, and the instruction of neglected children. They never themselves adopted any common designation, but of the variety of derisive names they received from outsiders that of “Methodists” prevailed,—a sobriquet the fitness of which, indeed, as descriptive of one unchanging and inseparable feature of Wesley’s character (which he impressed also on his followers), was undeniable.
This first Oxford Methodism was very churchly. Between 1733 and 1735, however, a new phase was developed. Its adherents became increasingly patristic in their sympathies and tendencies, and Wesley came much under the influence of William Law. In regard to this period of his history, Wesley himself says that he
“Bent the bow too far, by making antiquity a coordinate, rather than a subordinate, rule with Scripture, by admitting several doubtful writings, by extending antiquity too far, by believing more practices to have been universal in the ancient church than ever were so, by not considering that the decrees of a provincial synod could bind only that province, and the decrees of a general synod only those provinces, whose representatives met therein, that most of those decrees were adapted to particular times and occasions, and, consequently, when those occasions ceased, must cease to bind even those provinces.”
It was in 1736, during his residence in Georgia, whither he had gone as a missionary of the Propagation Society, that he learnt those lessons. Notwithstanding his ascetic severity and his rubricalpunctilios, the foundations of his High-Churchmanship were gradually giving way. When he returned to England he had already accepted the doctrine of “salvation by faith,” although he had not as yet learned that view of the nature of faith which he was afterwards to teach for half a century. He had, however, as in the journal of his homeward voyage he tells us, learned, “in the ends of the earth,” that he “who went to America to convert others was never himself converted to God.” In this result his Oxford Methodism came to an end.
The original Methodism of Oxford never at any one time seems to have numbered as many as thirty adherents.
There was a set called “Methodists,” but there was no organization, no common bond of special doctrine or of discipline; there were habits and usages mutually agreed upon, but there was no official authority, only personal influence. The general features of the fraternity, if fraternity it may be called, seem to suggest closer analogies with the “Tractarian” school in its earlier stages than with anything else in modern history, and the personal ascendency of John Wesley may remind us in some measure of the influence exercised a century later by J. H. Newman. There was no more any germ of permanent organization in the Oxford Methodism of 1735 than in the patristic and “Tractarian” school of Oxford of 1833.
2. Methodism after Wesley's Conversion. — John Wesley landed at Deal, on his return from Georgia, on February 1, 1738. His journals on the homeward voyage, says Miss Wedgwood, “chronicle for us that deep dissatisfaction which is felt whenever an earnest nature wakes up to the incompleteness of a traditional religion; and his after life, compared with his two years in Georgia, makes it evident that he passed at this time into a new spiritual region.” “By Peter Böhler, in the hands of the great God,” he writes in his journal, “I was, on March 5, fully convinced of the want of that faith whereby we are saved.” This “conviction” was followed on March 24 of the same year (1738) by his “conversion.”
Like most good men of that age in England, Wesley, before he came under the influence of his Moravian teacher, had regarded faith as a union of intellectual belief and of voluntary self-submission—the belief of the creeds and submission to the laws of Christ and to the rules and services of the church, acted out day by day and hour by hour, in all the prescribed means and services of the church and in the general duties of life. From this conception of faith the element of the supernatural was wanting, and equally that of personal trust for salvation on the atonement of Christ. The work of Böhler was to convinceWesley that such faith as this, even though there might be more or less of divine influence unconsciously mingling with its attainment and exercise, was essentially nothing else than an intellectual and moral act or habit, a natural operation and result altogether different from the true spiritual faith of a Christian. This conviction led him a few days afterwards to stand up at the house of the Rev. Mr Hutton, College Street, Westminster, and declare that five days before he had not been a Christian. When warned not thus to despise the benefits of sacramental grace, he rejoined, “When we renounce everything but faith and get into Christ, then, and not till then, have we reason to believe that we are Christians.” It is true that for several years after this he remained High-Church in some of his principles and opinions, but nevertheless his ritualism was dead at its roots.
This experience also made Wesley an evangelist. He had a forgotten gospel to preach,—the gospel by which men were to be converted, as he had been, and to be made “new creatures.” And this result, this new birth, was not dependent on any churchly form or ordinance, on any priestly prerogative or service, or on any sacramental grace or influence. To raise up, accordingly, by his preaching and personal influence, a body of converted men, who should themselves become witnesses of the same truth by which he had been saved, was henceforth to be Wesley’s life-work. This was the inspiration under which he became a great preacher; this also made him an organizer of his living witnesses into classes and societies. In the pulpit was the preaching power; in the class-room was the private and personal influence. The vital link between the pulpit and the class meeting was the doctrine and experience of “conversion.” Thus Wesleyan Methodism is derived, not from Wesley the ritualist, but from Wesley the evangelist.
Wesley’s doctrines offended the clergy. His popularity as a preacher alarmed them. The churches were soon shut against him. He attended the religious meetings— on a Church of England basis—which had existed in London and elsewhere for fifty years, so far as these were still open to him, the Moravian meetings, and meetings in the rooms of private friends, but these were quite insufficient for the zeal and energy of himself and his brother, who had been “converted” a few days before himself. Accordingly, in 1739, he followed the example set by Whitefield, and preached in the open air to immense crowds. In the same year also he yielded to the urgency of his followers and to the pressure of circumstances, and, becoming possessed of an old building called “the Foundery,” in Moorfields, transformed it into a meetinghouse. Here large congregations came together to hear the brothers. About the same time, in Bristol and the neighbouring colliery district of Kingswood, he found himself obliged, not a little against his will, to become the owner of premises for the purpose of public preaching and religious meetings. Here was the beginning of that vast growth of preaching-houses and meeting-rooms, all of them for nearly fifty years settled on Wesley himself, which, never having in any way belonged to the Church of England, became, through Wesley, the possession of the Methodist Connexion.
The religious societies through which the Wesleys, after their conversion, exercised at first their spiritual influence were in part, as has been intimated, Moravian,—that in FetterLane, of which the rules were drawn up by Wesley himself in 1738 (May 1), being the chief of these,—and in part societies in connexion with the Church of England, the successors of those which sprang up in the last years of the Stuarts, as if to compensate for the decay of Puritanism within the church. In 1739, however, a strong leaven of antinomianquietism gained entrance among the Moravians of England (Böhler himself having left for America in the spring of 1738); and Wesley, after vainly contending for a time against this corruption, found it necessary formally to separate from them, and to establish a society of his own, for which a place of meeting was already provided at the Foundery. This was the first society under the direct control of Wesley, and herein was the actual and vital beginning of the WesleyanMethodist Society, that is, of Wesleyan Methodism. Hence the Wesleyans celebrated their centenary in 1839. It was not, however, till 1743 that Wesley published the Rules of his Society .By that time not a few other local societies had bθ2∩ addd to that at the Foundery, the three chief centres being London, Bristol, and Newcastle. Hence Wesley called his Society, when he published the “Rules” in 1743, the “United Societies.” His brother’s name was joined with his own at the foot of these Rules, in their second edition, dated May 1, 1743, and so remained in all later editions while Charles Wesley lived. Those Rules are still the rules of Wesleyan Methodism. Since Wesley’s death they have not been altered. During his life only one change was made of any importance. In 1743 the offerings given weekly in the classes were for the poor, there being at that time no Conference and no itinerant preachers except the two brothers; after a few years the rules prescribed that the weekly contributions were to go “towards the support of the gospel.” The Society is described as “a company of men having the form, and seeking the power, of godliness, united in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other to work out their salvation.” “The only condition previously required of those who desire admission into these societies” is “a desire to flee from the wrath to come, and to be saved from their sins.” The customary contribution was a minimum of a penny a week or a shilling a quarter.
In 1739 these societies were not divided into “classes.” But in 1742 this further step in organization was taken, and the change is recognized in the rules of 1743. Leaders were appointed to these classes, and became an order of spiritual helpers and subpastors, not ordained like lay elders in the Presbyterian churches, but, like them, filling up the interval between the pastors that “labour in the word and doctrine” and the members generally, and furnishing the main elements of a council which, in after years, grew up to be the disciplinary authority in every “society.” In every society there was from the beginning a “steward” to take and give account of moneys received and expended. After a few years there were two distinct stewards, one being specially appointed to take cafe of the poor and the “poor’s money,” the other being, in general, the “society steward.” And, finally,—though hardly, perhaps, during Wesley’s lifetime,—in the larger societies there came to be two stewards of each description. The leaders and stewards together constituted “the leaders’ meeting,” of which, however, the complete circle of functions grew into use and into recognition only by degrees. The Rules of the Society, which are strict and searching, relate to worship, to conduct, and to the religious life, but do not once mention or refer to the Church of England, the parish church, or the parish clergy. The only authority at first was the personal authority of the two brothers, exercised either directly or by their official delegates. After years had passed away the leaders’ meeting came to have an important jurisdiction and authority, but its rights and powers were neither defined nor recognized until after Wesley’s death. From first to last there is no trace or colour of any Anglican character in the organization. Moravians or Dissenters might have entered the fellowship, and before long many did enter it who had either been Dissenters or, at any rate, had seldom or never entered a church. What would to-day be called the “unsectarian” character of his society was, indeed, in Wesley’s view, one of its chief glories. All the time, however, this “unsectarian” society was only another “sect” in process of formation. Wesley for many years before his death had seen that, unless the rulers of the church should come to adopt in regard to his society a policy of liberal recognition, this might be the outcome of his life-work. And it would seem as if in his private confidences with himself he had come in the end at times to acquiesce in this result.
Still more decisive, however, was the third step in the development of Wesley’s “Society.” The clergy not only excluded the Wesleys from their pulpits, but often repelled them and their converts from the Lord’s Supper. This was first done on a large scale, and with a systematic harshness and persistency, at Bristol in 1740. Under these circumstances the brothers took thecdecisive step of administering the sacrament to their societies themselves, in their own meeting-rooms, both at Bristol and at Kingswood. This practice having thus been established at Bristol, it was not likely that the original society at the Foundery would rest content without the like privilege, especially as some of the clergy in London acted in the same manner as those at Bristol. There were therefore at the Foundery also separate administrations. Here then, in 1740, were two—if we include Kingswood, three—separate local churches, formed, it is true, and both served and governed by ordained clergymen of the Church of England, but not belonging to that church or in any respect within its government. As thereafter during Wesley’s life one of the brothers, or some cooperative or friendly clergyman, was almost always present in London and in Bristol for the administration of the sacraments, these communions, when once begun, were afterwards steadily maintained, the Lord’s Supper being, as a rule, administered weekly. Both on Sundays and on week days full provision was made for all the spiritual wants of these “societies,” apart altogether from the services of the Church of England. The only link by which the societies Were connected with that church—and this was a link of sentiment, not an organic one—was that the ministers who served them were numbered among its “priests.”
In 1741 Wesley entered upon his course of calling out lay preachers, who itinerated under his directions. To the societies founded and sustained with the aid of these preachers, who were entirely and absolutely under Wesley’s personal control, the two brothers, in their extensive journeys, administered the sacraments as they were able. The helpers only ranked as laymen, many of them, indeed, being men of humble attainments and of unpolished ways. For the ordinary reception of the sacraments the societies in general were dependent on the parish clergy, who, however, not seldom repelled them from the Lord’s table. So also for the ordinary opportunities of public worship they often had no resource but the parish church. The simple service in their preaching-room was, as Wesley himself insisted, defective, as a service of public worship, in some important particulars: besides which, the visits of the itinerants were usually, at least at first, few and far between. Wesley accordingly was urgent in his advices and injunctions that his societies generally should keep to their parish churches; but long before his death, especially as the itinerant preachers improved in quality and increased in number, there was a growing desire among the societies to have their own full Sunday services, and to have the sacraments administered by their own preachers. The development of these preachers into ministers, and of the societies into fully organized churches, was, if not the inevitable, at any rate the natural, result of the steps which Wesley took in order to carry on the work that was continually opening up before him.
In 1744 Wesley held his first Conference. The early Conferences were chiefly useful for the settlement of points of doctrine and discipline and for the examination and accrediting of fellowlabourers. They met yearly. Conferences were a necessity for Wesley, and became increasingly so as his work continued to grow upon him. It was inevitable also that the powers of the Conference, although for many years the Conference itself only existed as it were on sufferance, and only exercised any authority by the permission of its creator and head, should continually increase. The result was that in 1784 Wesley could no longer delay the legal constitution of the Conference, and that he was compelled, if he would provide for the-perpetuation of his work, to take measures for vesting in trustees, for the use of “the people called Methodists,” under the jurisdiction of the Conference as to the appointment of ministers and preachers, all the preaching places and trust property ol the Connexion. The legal Conference was defined as consisting of one hundred itinerant preachers named by Wesley, and power was given to the “legal hundred " continually from the first to fill up the vacancies in their own number, to admit and expel preachers, and to station them from year to year, no preacher being allowed to remain more than three years in one station.
By this measure Wesley’s work was consolidated into a distinct religious organization, having a legally corporate character and large property rights. And yet Wesley would not allow this great organization to be styled a “church.” It was only a “society” —the “United Society ”—the Society of “the people called Methodists”—the “Methodist Society.” And of its members all who were not professed Dissenters were by him reckoned as belonging to the Church of England, although a large and increasing proportion of them seldom or never attended the services of that church. The explanation of this apparent inconsistency is that Wesley admitted none to be Dissenters except such as were so in the eye of the law—those who, “for conscience sake, refused to join in the services of the church or partake of the sacraments administered therein”—and that he interpreted “the Church of England” to mean, as he wrote to his brother Charles, “all the believers in England, except Papists and Dissenters, who have the word of God and the sacraments administered among them.”
But Wesley was to carry his Society to a yet higher pitch of development, and one which made it still more difficult to distinguish its character from that of a distinct and separate church. In 1738 Wesley had been theoretically a High-Churchman. For some time even after he had entered upon his course of irregular and independent evangelism he continued to hold, in the abstract, High-Church views. But in 1746 he abandoned once for all his ecclesiastical High-Churchmanship, although he never became either a political or a latitudinarian Low-Churchman after the standard and manner of the 18th century. He relates in his journal under date January 20, 1746, how his views were revolutionized by reading Lord (Chancellor) King’s account of the primitive church. From this time forward he consistently maintained that the “uninterrupted succession was a fable which no man ever did or could prove.” One of the things taught him by Lord King’s book was that the office of bishop was originally one and the same with that of presbyter; and the practical inference which Wesley drew was that he himself was a “Scriptural Episcopos,” and that he had as much right as any primitive...
2. One of a sect of christians, founded by Morgan, or rather by John Wesley, and so called from the exact regularity of their lives, and the strictness of their principles and rules.
3. A physician who practices by method or theory.
4. In the cant of irreligious men, a person of strict piety; one who lives in the exact observance of religious duties.
2. One of an ancient school of physicians who rejected observation and founded their practice on reasoning and theory.
3. One of a sect of Christians, the outgrowth of a small association called the "Holy Club," formed at Oxford University, A.D. 1729, of which the most conspicuous members were John Wesley and his brother Charles; -- originally so called from the methodical strictness of members of the club in all religious duties.
4. A person of strict piety; one who lives in the exact observance of religious duties; -- sometimes so called in contempt or ridicule.
a name given in derision at different times to religious persons and parties which have appeared in this country; but which now principally designates the followers of the Rev. John Wesley. The societies raised up by the instrumentality of the Rev. George Whitefield were also called Methodists, and in Wales especially are still known by that appellation. For distinction’s sake, therefore, and also because a number of smaller sects have broken off from the Methodist societies since Mr. Wesley’s death, the religious body which he raised up and left organized under his rules, have of late been generally denominated the WESLEYAN METHODISTS. In the year 1729, Mr. John Wesley, being then fellow of Lincoln College, began to spend some evenings in reading the Greek Testament with Charles Wesley, student, and Mr. Morgan, commoner of Christ Church, and Mr. Kirkham, of Merton College. Not long after, two or three of the pupils of Mr. John Wesley, and one pupil of Mr. Charles Wesley, obtained leave to attend these meetings. They then began to visit the sick in different parts of the town, and the prisoners also, who were confined in the castle. Two years after, they were joined by Mr. Ingham, of Queen’s College, Mr. Broughton, and Mr. Hervey; and in 1735, by the celebrated Mr. George Whitefield, then in his eighteenth year. At this time their number in Oxford amounted to about fourteen. They obtained the name of Methodists, from the exact regularity of their lives, and the manner of spending their time. In October, 1735, John and Charles Wesley, Mr. Ingham, and Mr. Delamotte, son of a merchant in London, embarked for Georgia, having been engaged by the trustees of that colony as chaplains; but their ultimate design was to preach the Gospel to the Indians. No favourable ...opportunity offering itself for this pious work, and the strict and faithful preaching of the Wesleys having involved them in much persecution, and many disputes with the colonists, they returned to England, Mr. Charles Wesley in 1737, Mr. John Wesley in 1738. On the passage to America, and while in Georgia, Mr. John had met with several pious Moravians; whose doctrines of justification by faith alone, conscious pardon of sin, and peace with God, confirmed by their own calmness in danger and freedom from the fear of death, greatly impressed him. On his return to England, he was more fully instructed in these views by Bohler, a Moravian minister; and having proved their truth in his own experience, he began to preach in the churches of the metropolis, and other places, and then in rooms, fields, and streets, the doctrine of salvation by faith. In this his brother Charles was his zealouscoadjutor; and the effect was the awakening of great multitudes to a religious concern, and the commencement of a great revival of religion throughout the land, which has in its effects extended itself to the most distant parts of the world. At the time of Mr. Wesley’s death, the societies in connection with him in Europe, America, and the West Indies, amounted to eighty thousand members; they are now [1831] upward of three hundred thousand, beside about half a million in the United States of America, who since the acquisition of independence by that country have formed a separate church. The rules of this religious society were drawn up by Messrs. John and Charles Wesley in 1743, and continue to be in force. They state the nature and design of a Methodist society in the following words: “Such a society is no other than a company of men, having the form and seeking the power of godliness: united, in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other to work out their own salvation. That it may the more easily be discerned whether they are indeed working out their own salvation, each society is divided into smaller companies, called classes, according to their respective places of abode. There are about twelve persons, sometimes fifteen, twenty, or even more, in each class; one of whom is styled the leader. It is his business, 1. To see each person in his class once a week, at least, in order to inquire how their souls prosper; to advise, reprove, comfort, or exhort, as occasion may require; to receive what they are willing to give to the poor, or toward the support of the Gospel. 2. To meet the minister and the stewards of the society once a week, to inform the minister of any that are sick, or of any that walk disorderly and will not be reproved; to pay to the stewards what they have received of their several classes in the week preceding; and to show their account of what each person has contributed. There is only one condition previously required of those who desire admission into these societies, namely, a desire to flee from the wrath to come; to be saved from their sins: but wherever this is really fixed in the soul, it will be shown by its fruits. It is therefore expected of all who continue therein, that they should continue to evidence their desire of salvation, 1. By doing no harm; by avoiding evil in every kind, especially that which is most generally practised, such as taking the name of God in vain; profaning the day of the Lord, either by doing ordinary work thereon, or by buying or selling; drunkenness; buying and selling spirituous liquors, or drinking them, unless in cases of extreme necessity; fighting, quarrelling, brawling; brother going to law with brother; returning evil for evil, or railing for railing; the using many words in buying or selling; the buying or selling uncustomed goods; the giving or taking things on usury, that is, unlawful interest; uncharitable or unprofitable conversation, particularly speaking evil of magistrates or of ministers; doing to others as we would not they should do unto us; doing what we know is not for the glory of God, as the putting on of gold or costly apparel; the taking such diversions as cannot be used in the name of the Lord Jesus; singing those songs, or reading those books, which do not tend to the knowledge or love of God; softness, or needless self-indulgence; laying up treasure upon earth; borrowing without a probability of paying; or taking up goods, without a probability of paying for them. It is expected of all who continue in these societies, that they should continue to evidence their desire of salvation, 2. By doing good; by being in every kind merciful after their power, as they have opportunity; doing good of every possible sort, and, as far as possible, to all men; to their bodies, of the ability which God giveth, by giving food to the hungry, by clothing the naked, by visiting or helping them that are sick or in prison; to their souls, by instructing, reproving, or exhorting all we have any intercourse with; trampling under foot that enthusiastic doctrine of devils,--that we are not to do good unless our hearts be free to it: by doing good, especially to them that are of the household of faith, or groaning so to be; employing them preferably to others; buying one of another; helping each other in business, and so much the more as the world will love its own, and them only; by all possible diligence and frugality, that the Gospel be not blamed; by running with patience the race set before them, denying themselves, and taking up their cross daily; submitting to bear the reproach of Christ; to be as the filth and off-scouring of the world, and looking that men should say all manner of evil of them falsely for the Lord’s sake. It is expected of all who continue in these societies, that they should continue to evidence their desire of salvation, 3. By attending on all the ordinances of God: such are, the public worship of God; the ministry of the word either read or expounded; the supper of the Lord; family and private prayer; searching the Scriptures, and fasting and abstinence. These are the general rules of our societies, all which we are taught of God to observe, even in his written word, the only rule, and the sufficient rule, both of our faith and practice; and all these we know his Spirit writes on every truly awakened heart. If there be any among us who observe them not, who habitually breaks any of them, let it be made known to them who watch over that soul, as they that must give an account. We will admonish him of the error of his ways; we will bear with him for a season; but then, if he repent not, he hath no more place among us: we have delivered our own souls.”
The effect produced by the preaching of the two brothers in various parts of the kingdom, and those frequently the most populous and rude, rendered it necessary to call out preachers to their assistance, and especially since the clergy generally remained negligent, and rather opposed and persecuted, than encouraged, the Wesleys in their endeavours to effect a national reformation. The association of preachers with themselves in the work led to an annual meeting of the ministers, then and since called the conference. The first conference was held in June 1744, at which Mr. Wesley met his brother, two or three other clergymen, and a few of the preachers, whom he had appointed to come from various parts, to confer with them on the affairs of the societies. Monday, June 25,” observes Mr. Wesley, and the five following days, we spent in conference with our preachers, seriously considering by what means we might the most effectually save our own souls, and them that heard us; and the result of our consultations we set down to be the rule of our future practice.” Since that time a conference has been annually held; Mr. Wesley himself having presided at forty-seven. The subjects of their deliberations were proposed in the form of questions, which were amply discussed; and the questions, with the answers agreed upon, were afterward printed under the title of Minutes of several Conversations between the Rev. Mr. Wesley and others,” commonly called Minutes of Conference.
As the kingdom had been divided into circuits, to each of which several preachers were appointed for one or two years, a part of the work of every conference was to arrange these appointments and changes. In the early conferences various points of doctrine were discussed with reference to the agreement of all in a common standard; and when this was settled, and the doctrinal discussions discontinued, new regulations continued to be adopted, as the state of the societies, and the enlargingopportunities of doing good, required. The character of all those who were engaged in the ministry was also annually examined; and those who had passed the appointed term of probation, were solemnly received into the ministry. All the preachers were itinerants, and, animated by the example of Mr. Wesley, went through great labours, and endured many privations and persecutions, but with such success that societies and congregations were in a few years raised up in almost every part of England, and in a very considerable number of places in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. The doctrines held by the Methodists, Mr. Wesley declared repeatedly in his writings to be those contained in the Articles of the church of England; for he understood the article on predestination, as many others have done, in a sense not contrary to the doctrine of the redemption and the possible salvation of the whole human race. It will, therefore, be merely necessary to state those views of certain doctrines which it has been thought the Wesleyan Methodists hold in a somewhat peculiar way, or on which they have been most liable to misrepresentation.
They maintain the total fall of man in Adam, and his utter inability to recover himself, or take one step toward his recovery, without the grace of God preventing him, that he may have a good will, and working with him when he has that good will.” They assert that Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man.” This grace they call free, as extending itself freely to all. They say that Christ is the Saviour of all men, especially of them that believe;” and that, consequently, they are authorized to offer salvation to all, and to preach the Gospel to every creature.” They hold justification by faith. Justification,” says Mr. Wesley, “sometimes means our acquittal at the last day, Matt. xii, 37: but this is altogether out of the present question; for that justificationwhereof our Articles and Homilies speak, signifies present forgiveness, pardon of sins, and consequently acceptance with God, who therein declares his righteousness, or justice, and mercy, by or for the remission of sins that are past, Romans iii, 25, saying, ‘I will be merciful to thy unrighteousness, and thine iniquities I will remember no more.’ I believe the condition of this is faith, Rom. iv, 5, &c; I mean, not only that without faith we cannot be justified, but also that as soon as any one has true faith, in that moment he is justified. Faith, in general, is a divine supernatural evidence, or conviction, of things not seen, not discoverable by our bodily senses, as being either past, future, or spiritual. Justifying faith implies, not only a divine evidence, or conviction, that ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself,’ but a full reliance on the merits of his death, a sure confidence that Christ died for my sins; that he loved me, and gave himself for me: and the moment a penitentsinner believes this, God pardons and absolves him.” This faith, Mr. Wesley affirms, “is the gift of God. No man is able to work it in himself. It is a work of Omnipotence. It requires no less power thus to quicken a dead soul, than to raise a body that lies in the grave. It is a new creation; and none can create a soul anew but He who at first created the heavens and the earth. It is the free gift of God, which he bestows not on those who are _worthy_ of his favour, not on such as are _previously holy_, and so _fit_ to be crowned with all the blessings of his goodness; but on the ungodly and unholy, on those who till that hour were fit only for everlasting destruction; those in whom is no good thing, and whose only plea was, ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner!’ No merit, no goodness, in man, precedes the forgiving love of God. His pardoning mercy supposes nothing in us but a sense of mere sin and misery; and to all who see and feel and own their wants, and their utter inability to remove them, God freely gives faith, for the sake of Him in whom he is always well pleased. Good works follow this faith, Luke vi, 43, but cannot go before it; much less can sanctification, which implies a continued course of good works springing from holiness of heart.” As to repentance he insisted that it is conviction of sin, and that repentance, and works meet for repentance, go before justifying faith; but he held, with the church of England, that all works, before justification, had the nature of sin;” and that, as they had no root in the love of God, which can only arise from a persuasion of his being reconciled to us, they could not constitute a moral worthinesspreparatory to pardon. That true repentance springs from the grace of God, is most certain; but, whatever fruits it may bring forth, it changes not man’s _relation_ to God. He is a sinner, and is justified _as such_; for it is not a saint, but a sinner, that is forgiven, and under the notion of a sinner.” God justifieth the ungodly, not the godly. Repentance, according to his statement, is necessary to true faith; but faith alone is the direct and immediate instrument of pardon. They hold also the direct internal testimony of the Holy Spirit to the believer’s adoption; for an exposition of which see HOLY SPIRIT.
They maintain also that, by virtue of the blood of Jesus Christ, and the operations of the Holy Spirit, it is their privilege to arrive at that maturity in grace, and participation of the divine nature, which excludes sin from the heart, and fills it with perfect love to God and man. This they denominate Christian perfection. On this doctrine Mr. Wesley observes, “Christian perfection does not imply an exemption from ignorance or mistake, infirmities or temptations; but it implies the being so crucified with Christ, as to be able to testify, ‘I live not, but Christ liveth in me,’ Gal. ii, 23, and ‘hath purified their hearts by faith,’ Acts xv, 9.” Again: To explain myself a little farther on this head: 1. Not only sin, properly so called, that is, a voluntary transgression of a known law; but sin, improperly so called, that is, an involuntary transgression of a divine law known or unknown, needs the atoning blood. 2. I believe there is no such perfection in this life as excludes these involuntary transgressions, which I apprehend to be naturally consequent on the ignorance and mistakes inseparable from mortality. 3. Therefore, sinless perfection is a phrase I never use, lest I should seem to contradict myself. 4. I believe a person filled with the love of God is still liable to these involuntary transgressions. 5. Such transgressions you may call sins, if you please; I do not, for the reasons above mentioned.”
The rules of the Methodist societies have been already given; but, in order to have a general view of their ecclesiastical economy, it must be remarked, that a number of these societies united together form what is called a circuit. A circuit generally includes a large market town, and the circumjacent villages to the extent of ten or fifteen miles. To one circuit two or three, and sometimes four, preachers are appointed, one of whom is styled the superintendent; and this is the sphere of their labour for at least one year, or not more than three years. Once a quarter the preachers meet all the classes, and speak personally to each member. Those who have walked orderly the preceding quarter then receive a ticket. These tickets are in some respects analogous to the _tesseræ_ of the ancients, and answer all the purposes of the commendatory letters spoken of by the Apostle. Their chief use is to prevent imposture. After the visitation of the classes a meeting is held, consisting of all the preachers, leaders, and stewards in the circuit. At this meeting the stewards deliver their collections to a circuit steward, and every thing relating to temporal matters is publicly settled. At this meeting the candidates for the ministry are proposed, and the stewards, after officiating a definite period, are changed. A number of circuits, from five to ten, more or fewer, according to their extent, form a district, the preachers of which meet annually. Every district has a chairman, who fixes the time of meeting. These assemblies have authority, 1. To examine candidates for the ministry, and probationers, and to try and suspend preachers who are found immoral, erroneous in doctrine, or deficient in abilities. 2. To decide concerning the building of chapels. 3. To examine the demands from the poorer circuits respecting the support of the preachers and of their families, from the public funds. 4. To elect a representative to attend and form a committee to sit previously to the meeting of the conference, in order to prepare a draught of the stations of all the preachers for the ensuing year. The judgment of this meeting is conclusive until conference, to which an appeal is allowed in all cases.
The conference, strictly speaking, consists only of a hundred of the senior preachers, according to the arrangements prescribed in a deed of declaration, executed by Mr. Wesley, and enrolled in chancery. But the preachers elected at the preceding district meetings as representatives, the superintendents of the circuits, and such preachers as the districts allow to attend, sit and vote usually as one body. At the conference, every preacher’s character undergoes the strictest scrutiny; and if any charge be proved against him, he is dealt with accordingly. The preachers are also stationed, the proceedings of the subordinate meetings reviewed, and the state of the connection at large is considered. The conference is commonly held in London, Leeds, Bristol, Manchester, Liverpool, and Sheffield, in rotation, at the latter end of July.
By the minutes of the last conference, 1831, it appears that this religious body had three hundred...
METHODIUS, the apostle of the Slavs, was a native of Thessalonica, and was born about the year 825. His nationality is unknown, but most probably he was a Graecized Slav; the family of which he was a member appears to have been one of considerable social distinction, and he himself had already attained high official rank in the government of Macedonia before he determined to abandon his secular career and embrace the monastic life. His younger brother Constantine (better known as Cyril, the name he adopted at Rome shortly before his death) had also distinguished himself as a secular “philosopher” in Constantinople before he withdrew to the cloister and to solitude. Constantine about 860 had been sent by the emperor Michael III. to the Khazars, in response to their request for a Christian teacher, but had not remained long among them; after his return to within the limits of the empire, his brother and he laboured for the instruction of the Slavonic or Slavonicized population, especially by means of translations of the Scripture lessons and the liturgical books used in Christian worship. About the year 863, at the invitation of Rastislav, king of “Great Moravia,” who desired the Christianization of his subjects, but at the same time that they should be independent of the Germans, the two brothers went to his capital (its site is unknown), and, besides establishing a seminary for the education of priests, successfully occupied themselves in preaching in the vernacular and in diffusing their religious literature. After four years they seem to have received and accepted an invitation to Rome from Pope Nicholas I., who had just been engaged in his still extant correspondence with the newly converted Bulgarian king; his death occurred before their arrival, but they ...were kindly received by his successor Hadrian II. Constantine died in Rome, but Methodius, after satisfying the pope of his orthodoxy and obedience, went back to his labours in “Moravia” as archbishop of Pannonia. His province appears to have been, roughly speaking, co-extensive with the basins of the Raab, Drave, and Save, and thus to have included parts of what had previously belonged to the provinces of Salzburg and Passau. In 871 complaints on this account were made at Rome, nominally on behalf of the archbishop of Salzburg, but really in the interests of the German king and his Germanizing ally Swatopluk, Rastislav’s successor; they were not, however, immediately successful. In 879, however, Methodius was again summoned to Rome by Pope John VIII., after having declined to give up the practice of celebrating mass in the Slavonic tongue; but, owing to the peculiar delicacy of the relations of Rome with Constantinople, and with the young church of Bulgaria, the pope, contrary to all expectation, ultimately decided in favour of a Slavonic liturgy, and sent Methodius (880) back to his diocese with a suffragan bishop, and with a letter of recommendation to Swatopluk. This suffragan, a German named Wiching, unfortunately proved quite the reverse of helpful to his metropolitan, and through his agency, especially after the death of John VIII. in 882, the closing years of the life of Methodius were embittered by continual ecclesiastical disputes, in the course of which he is said to have laid Swatopluk and his supporters under the ban, and the realm under interdict. The date of the death of Methodius is variously given; the most trustworthy tradition says that it took place on April 6, 885. He was buried at Welehrad (probably Stuhlweissenberg). The Greek Church commemorates St Cyril on February 14 and St Methodius on May 11; in the Roman Church both are commemorated on March 9.
See Schafarik’s Slawische Alterthiimer, where the original authorities are fully referred to. The subject of the present notice is most probably not to be identified with the Methodius, a painter and monk, who, according to a well-known legend, converted Boris of Bulgaria by means of a picture of Christ’s second coming.
9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 16, p. 194 [661 words — estimated reading time: 4 minutes]
1. To reduce to method; to dispose in due order; to arrange in a convenient manner.
2. One who brings with him any observations he has made in reading the poets, will find his own reflections methodized and explained in the works of a good critic.
N. order, regularity, uniformity, symmetry, lucidus ordo, music of the spheres, gradation, progression, series, subordination, course, even tenor, routine, method, disposition, arrangement, array, system, economy, discipline orderliness, rank, place
V. be in order, become in order, form, fall in, draw up, arrange itself, range itself, place itself, fall into one's place, take one's place, take one's rank, rally round, adjust, methodize, regulate, systematize
Adj. orderly, regular, in order, in trim, in apple-pie order, in its proper place, neat, tidy, en regle, well regulated, correct, methodical, uniform, symmetrical, shipshape, businesslike, systematic, unconfused &c. (see confuse ), arranged
Adv. in order, methodically, in -turn, - its turn, step by step, by regular -steps, -gradations, -stages, -intervals, seriatim, systematically, by clockwork, gradatim, at stated periods
Phr. natura non facit saltum, "order is heaven's first law", "order from disorder sprung", ordo est parium dispariumque rerum sua loca tribuens dispositio
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