rganization.
Believing this, I believe that exclusion from the Wesleyan Church
(either by expulsion or refusal of admission) is exclusion from a branch
of the Church of God--is an act the most solemn and eventful in the
history and relations of any human being--an act which should never take
place except upon the clear and express authority of the word of God.

Far be it from me to say one word other than in favour of every kind of
religious exercise and communion which tends to promote the
spiritual-mindedness, brotherly love, and fervent zeal of professing
Christians. That class-meetings (notwithstanding occasional
improprieties and abuses attending them), have been a valuable means in
promoting the spirituality and usefulness of the Wesleyan Church, no one
acquainted with her history can for a moment doubt; and I believe that
myriads on earth and in heaven have, and will ever have, reason for
devout thankfulness and praise for the benefits derived from
class-meetings, as well as from love-feasts and meetings for prayer. But
attendance upon the two latter is voluntary on the part of the members
of the Wesleyan Church; and what authority is there for suspending their
very membership in the Church of God on their attendance upon the
former? The celebration of the Lord's Supper, and not class-meeting, was
the binding characteristic institution upon the members of the primitive
Church. So I am persuaded it should be now; and that Christian faith and
practice alone (and not the addition of attendance upon class-meeting,)
should be the test of worthiness for its communion and privileges.
While, therefore, as an individual I seek to secure and enjoy all the
benefits of the faithful ministrations and scriptural ordinances of the
Wesleyan Church, I cannot occupy a position which in itself, and by its
duties requires me to enforce or justify the imposition of a condition
of membership in the Church of Christ, which I believe is not required
by the Holy Scriptures, and the exclusion of thousands of persons from
Church membership and privileges, to which I believe they have as valid
a right as I have, and that upon the sole ground of their non-attendance
at a meeting, the neglect of which our own Discipline admits, does not
involve "immoral conduct," and which Mr. Wesley himself, in his Plain
Account of the People called Methodists, has declared "to be merely
prudential, not essential, not of divine institution."

It is passing