g
three sentences against which I protest, had no place in the Minutes of
Conference finally revised and printed by Mr. Wesley in the year of his
death; nor do they exist in the Minutes of the British Conference to
this day. From what is therefore modern and unauthorized by Scripture,
by the practice of the Primitive Church, or by Mr. Wesley, I go back to
first principles, and say, as did Mr. Wesley to Dr. Coke and Mr. Asbury,
when he sent them to organize the Societies in America into a Church,
let us "simply follow the Scriptures and the Primitive Church."

It is often said that "nobody objects to attending class-meeting except
those who have no religion." Persons who thus judge of others show more
of the Pharisaical, than of the Christian, spirit, and evince but little
of the "wisdom that cometh from above" in thus "measuring others by
themselves." The following correspondence shows that I am second to none
in my appreciation of the value and usefulness of class meetings; but I
have had too much experience not to know that the best talkers in a
class-meeting are not always the best livers in the world; and I attach
less importance to what a person may say of himself in a class-meeting,
than to uprightness in his dealings, integrity in his word, meekness in
his temper, charity in his spirit, liberality in his contributions,
blamelessness in his life. Doings, rather than sayings, are the rule of
Divine judgment....

It may not be improper for me to observe, that there are ministers who
loudly advocate attendance at class-meeting as a Church-law, and yet do
not observe that law themselves perhaps once a year, much less
habitually, as they insist in respect to private members; and the most
strenuous of such advocates pay no heed to the equally positive
prohibitions and requirements of the discipline in several other
respects, especially in regard to band-meetings, which were designed, as
the Discipline expressly states, "to obey that command of God, 'confess
your faults one to another, and pray for one another, that ye may be
healed.'" I am far from intimating, or believing, that there are many
advocates of class-meeting tests of this description. But history shows,
from our Lord to the present time, that the most vehement advocates for
the "mint, annise and cummin" of particular tests and forms, are not
proportionably zealous for the "weightier matters of the law." It is
easier for men to impose and enforce law upon ot