hurchless, but out of reach
of church or ministry of whatever name, in those Southern States in
which nine tenths of his penitents and converts were gained, his
preachers were warned against the sacrilege of ministering to the
craving converts the Christian ordinances of baptism and the holy
supper, and bidden to send them to their own churches--when they had
none. The wretched incumbents of the State parishes at the first sounds
of war had scampered from the field like hirelings whose own the sheep
are not, and the demand that the preachers of the word should also
minister the comfort of the Christian ordinances became too strong to be
resisted. The call of duty and necessity seemed to the preachers
gathered at a conference at Fluvanna in 1779 to be a call from God; and,
contrary to the strong objections of Wesley and Asbury, they chose from
the older of their own number a committee who "ordained themselves, and
proceeded to ordain and set apart other ministers for the same
purpose--that they might minister the holy ordinances to the church of
Christ."[218:1] The step was a bold one, and although it seemed to be
attended by happy spiritual results, it threatened to precipitate a
division of "the Society" into two factions. The progress of events, the
establishment and acknowledgment of American independence, and the
constant expansion of the Methodist work, brought its own solution of
the divisive questions.

It was an important day in the history of the American church, that
second day of September, 1784, when John Wesley, assisted by other
presbyters of the Church of England, laid his hands in benediction upon
the head of Dr. Thomas Coke, and committed to him the superintendency of
the Methodist work in America, as colleague with Francis Asbury. On the
arrival of Coke in America, the preachers were hastily summoned together
in conference at Baltimore, and there, in Christmas week of the same
year, Asbury was ordained successively as deacon, as elder, and as
superintendent. By the two bishops thus constituted were ordained elders
and deacons, and Methodism became a living church.

* * * * *

The two decades from the close of the War of Independence include the
period of the lowest ebb-tide of vitality in the history of American
Christianity. The spirit of half-belief or unbelief that prevailed on
the other side of the sea, both in the church and out of it, was
manifest also here. Happ