Memoir of the Life and Labours of the REV. Adam Averell, for Nearly 30 Years President of the Primitive Wesleyan Methodist Conference (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1848 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVII. "The division"--Mr. Wesley's sermon in Cork, 1789--Mr. Averell presides at the Irish conference, 1814--Meeting in Aughnacloy--First conference of the Primitive Wesleyan Methodists, 1816--General committee meets in Dublin, 1817--Mr. Averell and the Dublin leaders join the remonstrants--The conference of 1818 assembles in Dublin--Rev. Dr. Stopford--Death of Arthur Ketne, Esq.--Increase to the Society in 1819. We now approach what not only originated a new epocha in the life of Mr. Averell, but was a memorable era in the history of Irish Methodism--THE DIVISION. It is not our intention to make this memoir a vehicle of controversy; we would rather draw a veil over the event to which we have alluded--an event which severed the strongest and tenderest ties, and filled many a heart with sorrow. But as the subject of this memoir was mixed up with every thing relating to it, and as it had an influence upon the whole of his after life, it would be an inexcusable omission to pass it over in silence. "The Division" in the Methodist society in Ireland was occasioned by a change in its economy; and this change was, the administration of the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord's supper by the preachers of the connexion. The Methodist society was founded by the Rev. Messrs. John and Charles Wesley in the year 1739. The design was not to form a church, or a separate sect, but merely a Religious Society; and those whom they called to official situations were not allowed to administer the sacraments. Mr. Wesley, speaking on this subject, in his sermon on Heb. v. 4, preached in Cork in 1789, and published by him in the Arminian Magazine for 1790, only a few months before his death, says: "In 1744, all the Methodist preachers had their first...