Note 11 — Theodosia Ernest. Volume II.: or, Ten Days’ Travel in Search of the Church. (continued 7)

If any one should doubt that it was the express intention of the makers of the Discipline to place the whole power of retaining or excluding members in the hands of the preachers, he can easily be satisfied by consulting the explanatory notes at first appended to the Discipline, and at one time published with it. These notes were prepared by Bishops Coke and Asbury, who presided in the Conference which formed the Church, and made, or rather adopted, the Discipline. In reference to this matter, the bishops say, “The grand point to be determined is this: whether the final judgment of an offender, in respect both to the guilt and the censure, should be invested in the minister or in the people? We shall therefore take a view of this part of our economy; first, in the light of Scripture, and secondly, in that of reason.” Then from Matthew xviii. 15, 17, “If thy brother shall trespass against thee,” etc., they come to the sage conclusion that “here is not a word said of the Church’s authority, either to judge or to censure. On the contrary, the whole authority is expressly delivered into the hands of the minister.” So that, if they intended by the provisions of the Discipline to place any part of the authority in the Church, they belied their own convictions and stultified their own explanation of the word of God.

“But it may be urged,” they go on to say, “that the offence must be first mentioned to the Church before the offender can be scripturally excluded. ‘Tell it to the Church,’ says our Lord. And so we do. It is merely for the sake of convenience that in large societies we tell it only to a committee, or representation of the society, or do abundantly more—even make them witnesses of the whole trial. But if such societies were to desire it, we would tell the whole unto the Church at large. But still, we must declare from the plain sense of the word of God that our Lord invests the minister with the whole authority both of judgment and of censure.”—(Notes on Discipline, chap. ii, sec. 8 as quoted in Emory’s History of the Discipline, pp. 331⁠–⁠288.)