Wesley Corpus

‘How, then, will you vindicate all these powers’ All these are ‘declaring those are no longer of our Society.’ ‘Here is a manifest congregation. Either it belonged to the Church of England or not. If it did not, you set up a separate communion against her. And how then are you injured, in being thought to have withdrawn from her’ I have nothing to do with this. The antecedent is false: therefore the consequent falls of course. ‘If it did belong to the Church, show where the Church gave you such authority of controlling and regulating it’ Authority of putting disorderly members out of that Society The Society itself gave me that authority. ‘What private clergyman can plead her commission to be thus a judge and ordinary even in his own parish’ Any clergyman or layman, without pleading her commission, may be thus a judge and ordinary. ‘Are not these powers inherent in her governors and committed to the higher order of her clergy’ No; not the power of excluding members from a private society, unless on supposition of some such rule as ours is -- namely, ‘That if any man separate from the Church, he is no longer a member of our Society.’ 7. But you have more proof yet: ‘The Grand Jury in Georgia found that you had called yourself Ordinary of Savannah. Nor was this fact contradicted even by those of the jury who, you say, wrote in your favor: so that it appears you have long had an inclination to be independent and uncontrolled.’ This argument ought to be good; for it is far-fetched. The plain case was this: that Grand Jury did assert that, in Mr. Causton’s hearing, I had called myself Ordinary of Savannah. The minority of the jury in their letter to the Trustees refuted the other allegations particularly; but thought this so idle an one that they did not deign to give it any farther reply than-- ‘As to the eighth bill we are in doubt, as not well knowing the meaning of the word “Ordinary.” [See Journal, i. 395; and letters of Aug. 3 and 17, 1742.]