AND DISCIPLINE OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 1860. WITH AN APPENDIX. Cincinnati: PUBLISHED BY POE & HITCHCOCK, CORNER OF MAIN AND EIGHTH STREETS. 1860. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, BY CARLTON & PORTER, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. ANDOVER THEOL. SEMINARY NOV 20 1907 -LIBRARY. 58.914 TO THE MEMBERS OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. DEARLY BELOVED BRETHREN,-We think it expedient to give you a brief account of the rise of Methodism, both in Europe and America. "In 1729, two young men in England, reading the Bible, saw they could not be saved without holiness: followed after it, and incited others so to do. In 1737, they saw, likewise, that men are justified be fore they are sanctified: but still hol ness was their object. God then thrust them out to raise a holy people."* In the year 1766, Philip Embury, a These are the words of Messrs. Wesley themselves. Local Preacher of our society, from Ireland, began to preach in the city of New York, and formed a society of his own countrymen and the citizens; and the same year, Thomas Webb preached in a hired room near the barracks. About the same time, Robert Strawbridge, a Local Preacher from Ireland, settled in Frederic County, in the State of Maryland, and, preaching there, formed some societies. The first Methodist Church was built in New York in 1768 or 1769; and in 1769 Richard Boardman and Joseph Pilmoor came to New York, who were the first regular Methodist Preachers on the continent. In the latter end of the year 1771 Francis Asbury and Richard Wright of the same order came over. We believe that God's design in raising up the Preachers called Methodists in America was to reform the continent and spread Scripture holiness over these lands. As a proof hereof we have seen since that time a great and glorious work of God from New York through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, as also of late to the extremities of the Western and Eastern States. We esteem it our duty and privilege most earnestly to recommend to you, as members of our Church, our FORM OF DISCIPLINE, which has been founded on the experience of a long series of years, as also on the observations and remarks we have made on ancient and modern Churches. We wish to see this little* publica tion in the house of every Methodist, and the more so as it contains the articles of religion, maintained more or less, in part or in whole, by every re formed Church in the world. * Used in reference to the 24mo. edition. |
