Livro The Great Iron Wheel Reviewed (Volume 4); Or, a Defence of the Methodist E. Church Against the Calumnious Asaults of REV. F. A. Ross and REV. A. Converse

This historic book may have numerous typos or missing text. Not indexed. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1848. Not illustrated.

Excerpt: ... THE GREAT IRON WHEEL. NO. I. The above is the title of a series of articles on Methodism, from the pen of the Rev. A. Ross, of the Presbyterian Church.

These articles contain a violent assault upon our system of Church government. In proof that I have not characterized them too strongly, I propose to present some of the hard sayings in which the writer has indulged.

He repeatedly styles our system a "despotism." He speaks of it thus: --" Why, in essential character, it is the very system of the Jesuits of Rome! It is, in principle, a crushing military despotism."--Again, " Just look at it, and you see it is a perfect system of passive obedience, and non-resistance." Again, "The reflecting man must see that all real liberty of thought and action is destroyed as truly by this system, as by the ecclesiastical system of Rome--as by the drill of an army--as by any despotism upon the face of the earth." He addresses to the Rev.

S. Patten, editor of a Methodist periodical, the following challenge: --"And will he then favor us with a definition and illustration of Russian, Turkish and Chinese despotism, or will he tell us where, in any army on earth, there is anything akin to this irresponsible power wielded in the Methodist Episcopal Church?" He tells us that if this system were allowed to work out its designs and tendencies--and he thanks God that it is not "because we are in free America"--the members of our church, as distinguished from the ministry, would be the "merest puppets"--that they might "be made to dress alike to order, in stiff collars, on one side, and dove-colored bonnets without ribbons on the other--doing identically the same thing," where the system operates, " from the St.

John's to the Rio Grande." He anticipates and answers an objection. "But ...