Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/257

DELAWARE COUNTY, 233 ed among the Methodists in 1844, they wisely resolved in future to pass that subject in silence, and since 1816, to at least a re- cent period, all discussions of the subject of slavery have been excluded from the Greneral Assembly. The work above referred to, adverting to the dissolution of the church, says, after discussing some doctrinal points which had become the issue between what were afterward styled the Old School and the New School churches : " What with complaints, decisions, protests, appeals, reversals, suspensions, restorations, &c. &c., a crisis was evidently at hand, and the notes of pre- paration for the Assembly of 1837, which were heard in every part of the church, gave fearful evidence of an approaching con- flict. Immediately before the session of the Greneral Assembly of 1837, the opposers of Mr. Barnes and his doctrines held a convention in Philadelphia, wherein they prepared a statement of their grievances, and drew up a memorial, with a method of reform. In the memorial they protested against sixteen errors of doctrine, ten departures from Presbyterian order, and five declensions in discipline ; and as a means of reform they pro- posed a severance from the Presbyterian Church of all local churches, presbyteries, and synods which were not organized on strictly Presbyterian principles, and the separation also from the Presbyterian Church of such presbyteries and synods as were known to be composed chiefly of unsound or disorderly members. On the meeting of the Assembly, it was found that the Old School party, as the opposers of Mr. Barnes were called, had a small majority in the body, and finding themselves possessed of sufiicient numerical strength, they proceeded, among other things, to abrogate the Plan of Union which had been formed between the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches, and to declare that the Synods of Utica, Greneva, Genesee, and Western Keserve, containing about five hundred ministers and about sixty thousand members, where the supposed heretical 20*