Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/255

DELAWARE COUNTY. 231 A series of weekly meetingSj was established for prayer and other religious vocations, and so strict was their outward deport- ment in comparison with that relic of aristocratic religion from which it had sprung, the Church of England, that the public, either out of compliment or derision, gave to the new organization, the appellation of Methodist,^^ which name it still retains. The limits of the present sketch will hardly permit us to dwell in detail upon the gradual increase of Methodism in England, or its introduction into the other civilized countries of the old world. It was introduced about the middle of the Eighteenth century (1766,) into the United States, by a com- pany of If ish emigrants, who landed in the cityof New York, and founded the first Methodist society in the new world. The society gradually increased prior to its regular organization, and the churches in some sections of the country had become quite numerous. These churches existed in an isolated and detached form until 1773, when the first conference was held in America. The number of churches represented was ten, who reported in total 1,160 members. Strange as it may seem, the church, instead of decreasing during the Revolution, which immediately succeeded the first conference, met with an almost incredible increase, so that the conference in 1783, reported fourteen thousand members. At the Annual Conference in 1792, some internal dissension led a large number of members to secede, who styling them- selves Republicans,^' formed the germ of another denom- ination, since become quite numerous, as the Christian, or Unitarian Baptist Church. In 1830, another secession took place, which resulted in the formation of the Protestant Methodist Church. At a still later period (1843,) a third secession from the radical orga- nization was effected, which contributed the elements for the formation of another church, styled the Methodist Wesleyan