A Reply to the Resolutions Passed by the Late Philadelphia Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church

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Excerpt from A Reply to the Resolutions Passed by the Late Philadelphia Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church: In March, 1864, With a Slight of the Acts of the Late General Conference of Said Church in the Following May If there had been any coercive clause in it, there could not have been fifty people found in any one State who would have accepted it. And those few were of the iron-shod or despotic make. But this new experiment for a free general Government, soon proved to be the greatest temporal blessing ever, bestowed upon mankind since the fall, and expulsion from Paradise. God must have presided over those great men, for no such glorious temporal machine could ever have been invented and put in motion by mortal man, unless God had been with him. It was a United States machine in every way suited to the wants of poor fallen man. Yea, it soon proved to be such a blessing, that that glorious Paradise from which he had fallen nearly 6000 years prior, soon hove almost in view. No such glory, peace, prosperity, and union had ever before crowned the brow of any people on the face of the globe. God was glorified by every section, article, and clause in the Constitution, or Organic law of the Nation, as long as it was faithfully adhered to by all the States. Yea, it was not only made a blessing to our revolutionary fathers, and their posterity, but proved to be an asylum to the oppressed of God's people who sought its coverts from all the nations of this sin-stricken world. Even the poor black Africans were taken from a land of heathen barbarism, (where they kill and eat each other at feasts, as we kill and eat turkies, and where they burn the wives and children on the funeral pile of their husbands, and where their wretched kings sacrifice thousands upon thousands of their own tribes annually to huge images of great black serpents, which they rear up as objects of worship, ) and even these tribes were put under its benign influences, and civilized b.y Christian masters, and made most useful subjects of this God's great temporal kingdom, that he had made a type of that Paradise from which Adam was expelled. And even that black heathenish barbarous race was made to aid in the glorification of the great God of the Universe. To attempt to describe the glorious blessings that the Constitution, under the providence of God, had proved to be, would be useless, for there is nothing visible to compare it to, to demonstrate or illustrate its glories to mortal man, for all materials are wanting. And when we saj it was in every way suited to the various soils, climates, productions, businesses, peace, union, and happiness of this great and glorious country, we have not said enough, but all that we can say. And it was thought by our holy fathers who formed this great general machine that can only be run by the free will of the several sovereign states, which machine was formed for the mutual benefit of the stajtes, that they had so created it, it being entirely in the hands and under the control of the several sovereign states, that it was utterly impossible for any tjTant usurper to get such a hold that he could ever usurp the powers that belonged exclusively to the states, in which the only, and all the sovereignty of the Nation lay. But alas! how sadly were they mistaken. The devil had to use a "serpent" to overthrow the Paradise formed for Adam. And he sent "serpents" to beguile this Nation into transgression, that we might be overthrow But while the "serpent" that beguiled Eve, wa of the animal tribe, the ones that beguiled the people of the Northern wing of this Nation, were bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, and blood of our blood, who dipped with us in the same dish. These "serpents" are the great "serpents" which are at the head of our downfall and ruin, and many of them are ministers who were ordained to preach the everl