groundless. In the first place, the question assumes, what is contrary
to fact, that Mr. Wesley instituted and committed the trust of
class-meetings as a condition of membership in the visible Church of
God, whereas he instituted and transmitted it as a means of grace among
the members of a private society in a church. In the next place, the
trust of class-meetings was only one part of a system which Mr. Wesley
committed as a trust to his followers. The one part of that trust was as
sacred as another, and the connection of one part with another is
essential to the fulfilment of the obligation. Now one part of Mr.
Wesley's trust, and that on which he insists ten times more voluminously
and vehemently than he ever spoke of class-meetings, was that his
followers should attend the services of the Church of England, should
receive the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord's Supper in it, should
abide in the Church of England, and that whenever they separated from
the Church of England they separated from him. These are so many trusts
that Mr. Wesley committed to his followers in England, and on which he
insisted as tests of membership in his Society; and in connection with
these trusts, he committed the trust of class-meetings--"as the
observance and practice of members of a private society in the Church of
England." Have Dr. Bunting and others, who charge me with being
anti-Wesleyan, fulfilled these trusts committed to them by Mr. Wesley?
Have they not wholly separated from the Church of England--ordaining
their own ministers, administering the ordinances, claiming and
exercising all the attributes of a Church, as much as the authorities of
the Church of England herself. And while Mr. Wesley disclaimed
exercising the office of excommunicating Church members, and denied that
admission into or exclusion from his Societies was admission into or
exclusion from the visible Church of Christ, my accusers exercise this
authority in the highest degree--confessedly and avowedly admitting into
and excluding persons from the visible Church, and making the attendance
at class-meeting a test of Church-membership--which Mr. Wesley never
believed, much less authorized. I leave it, therefore, to the judgment
of every man of common sense to say whether there is the shadow of a
reason for the pretensions and charges of my assailants. I am not
surprised that Dr. Bunting and others should feel sensitive on the
class-meeting test of church-membershi