METHODISM 100 YEARS AGO by Dudley Marvin Canright

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 4, 1868

METHODISM 100 YEARS AGO.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

In many places where Seventh-day Adventists now go to preach, they are branded as infidels, fanatics, a new sect, &c. The Methodists are generally about the most forward in bestowing these names upon us. But they seem to have forgotten their own recent origin, that these same names were once applied to themselves. I have before me a book printed in England just 100 years ago. In it I find the following passage:

“Where a contempt of Revelation having for some time spread amongst the people, we see them now become an easy prey to fanaticism and superstition; and the Methodist and the Papish Priest succeed, with great ease and silence, to the libertine, and freethinker.” Bishop Warburton’s Divine Legation, Vol. II, Book 3, Sec. 6, p. 295.

Here the Methodists are classed with fanaticism, superstition, popish priests, libertines and freethinkers. This was when they were a holy people. Are they called by these names now? No. The reason is obvious. D. M. CANRIGHT.