Wesley Corpus

But why should not all our houses be settled like that at Birstall Because, if the trustees have a power to place and displace preachers, then (1) Itinerant preaching is at an end. When the trustees in any place have fixed a preacher they like, the rotation of preachers there is at an end--at least, till they pick a quarrel with him and turn him out. (2) While he stays, how he will be gagged, since if he displeases the trustees he will lose his bread! and how will he dare to put a trustee out of the Society (3) If any beside the Conference name the preachers, surely it should not be twenty or thirty men, but all the Society unless you would say all the congregation. (4) The power of these trustees is greater than that of any noble-man-yea, or of the King himself. He can put in a preacher where he is patron; but he cannot put him out. ‘But since this power will not commence till after your death, why should you oppose it’ Because none else can oppose it so effectually. I have more influence than any other person is likely to have after me. And every one sees I am not pleading my own cause (as they would say the other preachers were); I am pleading not for myself, but for every preacher who desires to act on the old Methodist plan. I am pleading for Mr. Hopper, Mr. Bradburn, Mr. Benson, that you may not be liable to be turned out of all or any of our houses without any reason given at the pleasure of twenty or thirty men. I say ‘or any’; for I see no sufficient reason for giving up any house in England. And if one were given up, more would follow; it would be as the letting out of water. ‘But you did consent to it with regard to this house.’ Yes, I was worked into an unwilling consent [] and even this was grounded on the positive assertion that the deed could not be altered. Whereas it was actually altered in the second deed, not in one but in twenty places.