METHODIST EPISCOPAL Cnurtcu, the name given to the Society of Wesleyan Metho dists in the United States, where the first members of that body—immigrants from Ireland —established themselves as a reliolous society in New York in the year 1760. In the course of a year or two their numbers had considerably increased, and they wrote to John Wesley to send them out some competent preachers. Two immediately offered themselves -for the work, Richard Boardman and Joseph Pilmoor, who were followed in 1771 by Francis Asbury and Richard Wrifrht. The agitations preceding the war of independence, which soon afterwards broke out, interrupted the labors of the English Methodist preachers in America, all of whom, with the exception of Asbury, returned home before the close of the year 1777; but their place appears to have been supplied by others of native origin, and they continued to prosper, so that, at the termination of the revolution -ary stniggle, they numbered 43 preachers and 13,740 members. Up to this tiine, the Ainerican-Wesleyan Methodists had laid no clahn to being a distinct religious ormanization. Like Wesley himself, they regarded themselves as members of the English°Episcopal church, or rather of that branch of it then existing in America, and their " preachers" as a body of irregular auxiliaries to the ordained clergy. " Episcopal churches," we are in f ormed, " are still standing in New York and elsewhere, at whose altars Embury, Pilmoor, Boardman, Strawbridge, Asbury, and Rankin, the earliest Methodist preachers, received the holy communion.' But the recomnition of the United States as an independent country, and the difference of feelincrs and interests that necessarily sprung up between the con oTega tions at home and those inAmerica, rendered the formation of an independent society in evitable. Wesley became conscious of this, and met the emergency in a manner as bold as it was unexpected. He himself was only a presbyter of the church of England, but havino. persuaded himself that in the primitive church a presbyter and a bishop were one and the same order, differing only as to their official functions, he assumed the office of the latter, and, with the assistance of some other presbyters who had joined his movement, lie set apart and ordained the Rev. Thomas Coke, D.C.L., of Oxford university, bishop of the infant church, Sept. 2, 1784. Coke immediately sailed for America, and appeared, with his credentials, at the conference held at Baltimore, Dec. 25 of the same year. He
was unanimously recognized by the assembly of preachers, appointed Asbury coadjutor bishop, and ordained several preachers to the offices of deacon and elder. Wesley also granted the preachers permission (which shows the extensive ecclesiastical power he wielded) to organize a separate and independent church under the episcopal form of ,gov ,ernment: hence arose the " Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States." Neverthe less, there were not a few who were dissatisfied with the Episcopal form of government. This feeling grew stronger and stronger, until, in 1830, a secession took place, and a new ecclesiastical organization was formed, called the METHODIST PROTESTANT CHURCH,whose numbers, according to the returns for 1874, amounted to 65,000 members and 924 preachers. In 1842 a second secession took place, chiefly on the question of slavery— the seceders pronouncin,,o. all slave-holding sinful, and excluding slave-holders from .church membership and Christian fellowship; and in 1843 a meeting was held at Utica, N. Y., where a. new society was constituted and named the WESLEYAN 3IETHODIST CONNECTION OF AMERICA, whose members in 1870 amonnted to 20,000, and its preachers to 250. But in 1844 a far lanrer and more important secession took place on the same question, when the whole ofbthe Methodist societies in the then slave-holding states, conceiving themselves aggrieved by the proceedings instituted at the general conference of New York (1844) against the Rev. James O. Andrew, D.D., one of the bishops, and a citizeu of Georgia, who had married a lady possessed of slaves, resolved to break off connection with their northern brethren. Hence originated the Mortionism EPISCOPAL Ciruncif, SOUTH, whose numbers, in 1874, were as follows: Traveling preachers, 8,134; local preachers, 5,344; and members, 663,106, including whites, colored, and Indians. 'To these must be added 200,000 members forming the African Methodist Episcopal church, and 170,000 of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church. In 1869 a move ,ment began in favor of the reunion of the northern and southern sections of the Methodist Episcopal churches, which may—now that slavery is abolished—be successfully carried out. It may here be stated that the members of the Northern Methodist Episcopal Chvrch amounted in 1874 to 1,345,089.
Returning to the English Wesleyan Methodists, we now proceed to mention the various secessions from the parent body in the order of time.