But insurmountable
difficulties lay in the way. In the first place, none could be received
as travelling preachers, unless they were willing to go to whatever part
of the world the conference or the missionary committee might think fit
to send them, and unless they could _express_ their willingness to be so
disposed of before they went out. This I could not do. It was my
conviction that God had called me to labor in my own country, and to do
good amongst my own people. I did not believe myself called to go to any
foreign country to preach the gospel, and I did not therefore feel at
liberty to offer to go out on the terms required. I felt as if I should
do wrong to expose myself to unseen dangers and unknown trials and
difficulties in foreign lands, without a conviction that God required it
at my hands. And I could not think that I should be likely to succeed in
missionary labors, unless I could enter on them with a belief that those
were the labors for which God designed me.
There was another difficulty. Conference had made a new law,
establishing a new test of orthodoxy, and no one could be taken out as a
travelling preacher now, who could not subscribe to the doctrine of the
Eternal Sonship, as taught by Richard Watson and Jabez Bunting, in
opposition to Adam Clarke.
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