The determination to crush out “Nazaritism,” which was but another name for “the holiness movement,” had now become the fixed and settled policy of the Regency power in the Genesee Conference; and the purpose to be true to God and to the work of “spreading Scriptural holiness over the land,” for which Methodism originally claimed to have been raised up, was equally settled on the part of the persecuted preachers and their friends. Each party was fully committed to the conflict, which was constantly deepening, and had ventured too far into it to entertain any idea of retreating or surrendering now. The conspirators for the crushing of “Nazaritism” were sharpening their tools and laying their plans for doing desperate execution at the next session of the Conference. We shall see presently how they proceeded.

     In his “Cyclopedia of Methodism,” Article on “The Free Methodists,” Bishop Simpson says: “In 1858, two of the leaders were expelled from the Conference.” This is partly incorrect. Two preachers were expelled at that time, but one of them, Joseph McCreery, though prominently identified with the holiness movement and the work of revival and reform in the Conference, not only was never a leader in the Free Methodist Church, but was opposed to its organization in 1860, and did not connect himself with it until five years after it was organized.

     With regard to the penalties the Bishop’s statement is also equally misleading. The statement would lead one who did not know otherwise to suppose expulsion from the Conference was the full extent of the penalty inflicted in these cases. Such, however, is not the case. They were both “expelled from the Conference, and from the Church.” Why the whole truth is not stated must be largely a matter of conjecture. It has been suggested that possibly the Bishop was “unwilling to have it appear that the laws of the M. E. Church, as then administered, were like the laws of Draco, and punished the slightest offense, or even no offense, with death; or, worse still, like the edicts of Nero, which tortured men for being Christians.”

     Of course, one would naturally suppose that the offenses committed by these preachers must have been of an exceedingly aggravated character, to merit the infliction of the highest penalty known to ecclesiastical law. Whether or not such was the case will fully appear as we consider the trial proceedings.

     The reader will remember what was said in the preceding chapter regarding the report sent out, after Mr. Roberts’s first trial, that he had been convicted by his Conference of “immoral conduct.” That report was evidently shaped and circulated with a view to producing the impression that he had been guilty of gross iniquity. And what a shame! It is not to be wondered at that many among his close personal friends were deeply wounded at this indignity, added to what he had already borne. Nor is it at all strange that such treatment of a God-fearing minister of Jesus Christ should have been strongly resented and reprobated by some. The attempt on the part of one of his friends to free his own soul regarding what he considered a most unrighteous verdict in the case was finally seized upon and charged to Mr. Roberts himself, by the Regency, as the basis of the second bill of charges, on which he was tried, and expelled from the Conference and from the Church.

     That friend was a layman, named George W. Estes, who resided on the Clarkson circuit. He was a man of intelligence, as the sequel to the story will show. He was also a man of influence in his community. He was decidedly alive in religious experience, and had labored effectively with Mr. Roberts in the revival meetings he conducted in Brockport while pastor there.

     Entirely on his own initiative, and with Mr. Roberts wholly uninformed as to what he purposed to do, Mr. Estes during the year republished the article on “New School Methodism,” together with a short account of the trial, in pamphlet form, defraying all the expenses from his own purse. The following is the complete text of the Estes article, except the bill of charges, which we have already given in the preceding chapter:
 

     The foregoing [1] article in the Northern Independent was made the subject of general consultations in private caucuses of the Buffalo Regency, held in a room over Bryant & Clark’s book store, at LeRoy, on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings of the first week of the Conference, the result of which was the Bill of Charges given below. The manner of committing the feebler of the preachers to the condemnation of Brother Roberts in advance, was on this wise, as related by one present. One of the chiefs of the Regency, acting as chairman, asked: “What shall be done in the case of Brother Roberts? All in favor of his prosecution raise your hands?” The “immortal thirty” raised their hands, and a few presiding elderlings. The chairman then delivered a flaming exhortation to unanimity—that they must be united enough to carry the matter through, or it would not do to undertake it. After sundry exhortations, the vote was taken again, and a few more voted. After another season of fervent exhortation, a third vote was taken, in which all, save one, concurred; and the trial and condemnation were determined upon. Beautiful work this for godly, Methodist preachers, deriving their support from honest, religious societies among us! We put their Bill of Charges, with all its ingenious distortion of facts, on record here before the people as follows: (See pages 148, 151).

     For several years past there has been the annual sacrifice of a human victim at the Conference. It has been a custom. The religious rites and ceremonies attending this annual lustration assume a legal complexion. The victim is immolated according to law. E. Thomas, ‘J. McCreery, I. C. Kingsley, L. Stiles and B. T. Roberts constitute the “noble band of martyrs” thus far. Who Is selected for the next annual victim is not yet known. The midnight conclave of the “immortal thirty” has not yet made its selection. No man is safe who dares even whisper a word against this secret Inquisition in our midst. Common crime can command its Indulgences—bankruptcies and adulteries are venal offenses—but opposition to its schemes and policies is a “mortal sin”—a crime “without benefit of clergy.” The same fifty men who voted Brother Roberts guilty of “unchristian and immoral conduct” for writing the above [named] article, voted to readmit a brother from the regions round about Buffalo, for the service performed of kissing a young lady in the vestibule of the Conference room during the progress of Brother Roberts’s trial. “Nero fiddled while the martyrs burned.”

     Brother Roberts’s trial—if it deserves the name of trial—was marked by gross iniquity of proceedings. There are no regular Church canons in the M. E. Church to govern the specific manner of conducting trials. All is indefinite; A glorious incertitude and independence of all legal regulations prevail. The presidential discretion must of necessity have large latitude and range, either high or low, as prejudice or policy may incline. Thus, when a witness was asked if he knew of a private meeting of about thirty preachers at Medina during Conference, he answered, “Yes.” When asked for what purpose they met, he answered for “consultation.” Here the prosecution perceiving that all this secret caucusing at the Medina Conference to lock out the prayer-meetings, arrange the appointments, oust Presiding Elders, etc., etc., were likely to be brought out, objected to all the questions In the case which were not exactly covered by the verbal terms of the specifications which they themselves had artfully framed. And their objections were sustained by the Bishop. Every question as to the meetings of the “immortal thirty”—their doings and teachings —was objected to and ruled out as irrelevant to the specifications.

     Having been charged with affirming the existence of an associate body of about thirty preachers in the Conference for purposes indicated in his article, he was denied [the right] to elicit the facts in justification, which he could have proved by thirty witnesses. This right, which any civil or military Court would have allowed him, was denied. Of course, where witnesses refuse to testify, and the judge refuses to compel them to do so, there was no use wasting time in defense. Brother Roberts refused to continue the defense.

     Also a commission to take testimony was sent to Buffalo. But when they arrived they found an emissary from the Conference had been sent on before them to take charge of the Advocate office, who refused to sell or lend, or suffer to be transcribed, any of the copy of the papers or articles bearing on the case, and who put everybody “on the square” to refuse testimony. Having no power to compel witnesses to testify, the Committee returned with such testimony only as honest men voluntarily offered, which will be hereafter published.

     A venerable Doctor of Divinity read the “auto da fe” sermon, (prepared for the victim of the previous year) wherein he consigned, in true inquisitorial style, Brother Roberts, body and soul, to hell. This was done in his most masterly manner, evincing no embarrassing amount of idiosyncrasy or other mental cause for superannuation. This venerable D. D., though nominally superannuated, and an annual claimant of high rate upon the Conference funds, is nevertheless quite efficient in embarrassing effective preachers in their work, by concocting “bills of information” and “bills, of charges ;“ and pleading them to hell for the crime of preaching and writing the truth. Whether his plea will enhance the amount of the superannuated collections for the coming year remains to be seen.

     It was moved that the vote in Brother Roberts’s case should be taken by yeas and nays; but the same spirit of concealment and dread of light, fostered by secret society associations, prevailed here also. Like some in the olden time, they “feared the people,” and voted down the motion. The vote to sustain the charge of “unchristian and immoral conduct,” for writing and publishing these strictures on New School Methodism, was fifty-two to forty-three, being a majority of nine. Several members of Conference were absent, and several dodged through fear of the Presiding-Elder influence upon their appointments.

     The following preachers, as near as can be ascertained, voted to sustain the charge: I. Chamberlayne, G. Lanning, E. C. Sanborn, H. May, D. Nichols, M. Seager, H. C. Foote, G. Fillmore, A. D. Wilbor, P. Woodworth, H. L. Waite, H. Butlin, S. M. Hopkins, E. E. Chambers, G. W. Terry, J. Latham, H. W. Annis, Z. Hurd, T. Carlton, J. M. Fuller, W. H. Depuy, D. F. Parsons, S. Hunt, J. B. Lanckton, J. McEwen, H. H. Smith, S. C. Smith, G. Smith, L. Packard, C. S. Baker, W. S. Tuttle, J. McClelland, J. G. Miller, J. N. Simpkin, S. Y. Hammond, A. P. Ripley, H. M. Ripley, M. W. Ripley, B. L. Newman, A. Plumley, B. F. McNeal, H. S. Moran, B. M. Buck, J. J. Roberts, S. Parker, F. W. Conable, J. B. Wentworth, S. H. Baker, J. Timmerman, K. D. Nettleton, G. Delamater, W. C. Willing.

     Another significant fact was apparent in the case: the power of the Presiding Eldership. Quite a number of preachers would not vote at all. Too honest to aid the conspiracy, and too cowardly to face the “loaves-and-fishes” argument presented by the Presiding Elder influence, they sat still and saw the condemnation of the innocent, when they might have prevented it.

     The influence of the Book Concern had its effect upon the case. It has become a maxim in politics “that the debtor votes the creditor’s ticket.” So some indebted to the Concern discreetly refrained from voting at all; while two preachers, having refused to attend the private caucuses of the conspirators, and to pledge themselves in advance to vote for the condemnation of Brother Roberts, were scandalized with a public report of delinquency, in open Conference, by the Book Agent.

     But it was the influence of the slavery question which was paramount in the case. The Episcopacy is understood to be conservative on that subject, and “to refer to it judiciously in all the chief appointments.” Hence the Buffalo Regency in these days (notwithstanding high professions lately to the contrary, on the eve of election of delegates to the late General Conference) is also eminently conservative on that subject; and must needs commend itself to the central Episcopal sympathy by great zeal against the Northern Independent. Its associate editor in this Conference must be black-washed in revenge for the temerity of the people in subscribing for the paper. They could not wreak their vengeance on the people, except by proscribing one acknowledged, above all others in the Conference, to be the PEOPLE’S MAN.

     The infamous Brockport Resolutions [2] against the Nazarites, were tacitly indorsed by the Conference in its refusal to entertain the question of official administration involved in their passage. This is their reward for their spaniel loyalty to the Northern Advocate, and every other thing that wears the label of “law and order,” affixed by a pro-slavery administration. It is stated that two or three Nazarites voted with the Regency against the publication of the slavery report in the Independent. Surely it must be true of them, as reported, that they court persecutions and rejoice in being killed off at every Conference. Their strong hold upon the popular mind can not long survive their further blinking the slavery Issue. We shall see.

     So, brethren in the membership of the Genesee Conference, you see we have a clique among us called the Buffalo Regency—conspiring and acting in secret conclave to kidnap or drive away, or proscribe and destroy, by sham trials, and starvation appointments, every one who has boldness to question their supremacy in the Conference. By threats of insubordination, and farcical outcries of strife and division, they frighten the Episcopacy to give them the Presiding-Eldership power, with its patronage of appointments, and having that, of course they command the Conference vote, so far as they dare for fear of the people. We are fast losing our best men. The fearless champions of true Methodism are being cloven down, one after another, in our sight; and we sit loyally still, and weep and pray, and pay our money, yet another and another year, hoping the thing will come to an end.

     A thousand of us asked the Bishop to rid us of this incubus, which is crushing us into the earth.

     “We will do the best we can,” was the stereotyped reply to our loyal entreaties. How many more victims must be immolated, how many societies must be desolated, while the Episcopacy is making up its mind to grapple with this monster power, which is writhing its slimy folds around the Church of God, and crushing out its life? The Episcopacy, which alone has the power, having failed to redress our grievances and rid us of this unmethodistic and foreign dynasty, there is no remedy but an appeal to personal rights. The remedy of every member is within his own reach. For one, I shall apply that remedy. For me, while looking on. those preachers standing to be counted (no wonder they objected to the yeas and nays) in the vote to condemn Brother Roberts, at LeRoy, I made up my mind that not one of them—preacher, Presiding Elder or superannuate—should ever receive a cent of my money, on any pretense or by any combination whatsoever. I shall punctually attend Church at my own meeting house—prayer-meetings, class-meetings, love-feasts, and all the means of grace; but if one of those men come there to preach—I can’t help that—that is not my business. But I shall neither rim a step, nor pay a cent. And if, as has been told, all the domestic missionary appropriations in this Conference are varied from year to year—made and withheld to suit the pockets of Regency men appointed to them—this, as long as It continues, will absolve me from obligations to that cause. The same of the superannuate fund, so long as it is controlled by that dynasty. I agreed to support the M. E. Church as a Church of the living God; not as the mere adjunct of a secular or political clique.

GEORGE W. ESTES.

     With regard to the foregoing Mr. Roberts says:
 

     I never saw this article until some time after it was published, and was in no wise responsible for its publication. But Mr. Estes —a man of means, an exhorter in the M. B. Church, was responsible, and like a man, he assumed the responsibility. At the last Quarterly Conference In the year, the question of the renewal of his license came up. The Presiding Elder asked George W. Estes if he was the author of that pamphlet? He replied that he was Without a word of objection, the Presiding Elder renewed his license as an Exhorter, and soon after went to Conference, and voted to expel me from the Conference and the Church, on the charge of publishing this very pamphlet.[3]

     This is clearly another instance of sacrificing consistency and fairness on the altar of expediency. The Presiding Elder in question was a tool of the Regency faction, one of those men so wanting in the element of moral stamina that when Simon said, “Thumbs down,” he was servilely obedient, without any consideration of the inconsistency or unrighteousness of his action. In secret caucus the Regency power had predetermined that Mr. Roberts’s ecclesiastical head must go; and, when the test came, the Presiding Elder, though fully informed that George W. Estes, and not B. T. Roberts, was the author of the pamphlet, gave his vote to expel Mr. Roberts from the Conference and the Church on the ground of having republished and circulated “New School Methodism,” or having assisted in doing so.

     The following is the second bill of charges preferred against Mr. Roberts:
 

CHARGES.—I hereby charge Benjamin T. Roberts with unchristian and immoral conduct.
 

SPECIFICATIONS

     First, Contumacy: In disregarding the admonition of this Conference, in its decision upon his case at its last session.

     Second, In republishing, or assisting in the republishing and circulating of a document, entitled “New School Methodism,” the original publication of which had been pronounced by this Conference “unchristian and immoral conduct.”

     Third, In publishing, or assisting in the publication and circulation of a document, printed in Brockport, and signed, “George W. Estes,” and appended to the one entitled “New School Methodism,” and containing among other libels upon this Conference generally, and upon some of its members particularly, the following, to wit:

1. “For several years past there has been the annual sacrifice of a human victim at the Conference.”

2. “No man is safe who dare even whisper a word against this secret inquisition in our midst.”

3. “Common crime can command its indulgences; bankruptcies and adulteries are venal offenses; but opposition to its schemes and policies is a mortal sin—a crime without benefit of clergy.”

4. That “the same fifty men who voted Brother Roberts guilty of unchristian and immoral conduct voted to readmit a brother for the service performed of kissing a young lady.”

5. That “Brother Roberts’s trial was marked by gross iniquity of proceedings.”

6. That “on the trial, a right which any civil or military Court would have allowed him, was denied.”

7. That “a venerable Doctor of Divinity read the ‘auto da fé’ sermon, wherein he consigned in true inquisitorial style Brother Roberts’s body and soul to hell.!’

8. That “this venerable ‘D. D.’ is quite efficient in embarrassing effective preachers in their work and pleading them to hell for the crime of preaching and writing the truth.”

9. That “there is a clique among us called the Buffalo Regency, conspiring and acting in secret conclave, to kidnap, or drive away, or proscribe and destroy, by sham trials and starvation appointments, every one who has the boldness to question their supremacy in the Conference.”

10. That “the fearless champions of Methodism are being cloven down one after another In our sight.”

11. That “the aforesaid members of this Conference are a ‘monster power,’ which is writhing its slimy folds around the Church of God and crushing out its life.”

Signed,       DAVID NICHOLS.

PERRY, October 11, 1858.

     The Rev. Thomas Canton and the Rev. James M. Fuller acted as counsel for the prosecution.

     Mr. Roberts was not altogether without premonition of the coming storm. He had been credibly informed of threats made against him. The following is given as an instance:

     The Rev. S. C. Church, an old Presiding Elder, and a Freemason as well, but one of those noble-minded members of the fraternity who are better than the principles of their order, and who was indignant that Masonry should be scandalized by being pressed into service by ministers of Jesus Christ for the control of Conference affairs, gave him intimation of what he might have to reckon with in the following communication:
 

     During the last session of our Conference, at LeRoy, I was conversing with Rev. R. Ryan Smith, about the remark made by Rev. B. T. Roberts on the floor of the Conference, to the effect that the Committee on Education was packed.

     Smith said, “One more such statement will blot Roberts out”

     In the same conversation, he said, “You had better take yourself out of the way, or you will be crushed.”

CARYVILLE, October 20, 1857.

SAMUEL C. CHURCH.

     Anticipating the arrest of his character, Mr. Roberts had engaged the Rev. B. I. Ives, of the Oneida Conference, to act as counsel in his defense, and Mr. Ives was present for that purpose. But the Bishop ruled that counsel from another Conference was not allowable, and firmly adhered to that ruling.

     Then, as a majority of the Conference claimed to have been slandered, in their individual character, by what Mr. Roberts had written, and also as he was now informed that they had already virtually voted, in their secret caucus, to condemn him, he called for a change of venue, quoting the wise provision of the civil law, as follows:

     “The venue may be changed to another County when the defendant conceives that he can not have a fair and impartial trial in the County where the venue is laid.”

     He also pleaded that “not one man of the majority would be permitted, under similar circumstances, to sit on a jury in a Civil Court, if twenty-five cents only were at issue.” He also quoted the following as authority for the granting of his request:

“If the law says a man shall be judge in his own cause, such being contrary to natural equity, shall be void, for jura naturae sunt immutabilia; they are leges legum. Natural rights are immutable. They are the laws of laws.”— Hobart’s Report, page 87, Day vs. Savage.

     It will be plain to every unbiased mind that, in a case like this, where ministerial reputation was at stake, a thing which the true minister of Jesus holds as dear as his own life, the defendant should have been entitled to everything that could defeat injustice and contribute to a fair trial. But ecclesiastical Inquisitions are usually deaf to all pleadings from the oppressed and persecuted for anything like fairness and justice. The request was persistently refused.

     Having failed in both the foregoing efforts to obtain anything like fairness in the trial of his case, Mr. Roberts as a last resort, urged that he might be tried by a committee, according to the provision of the Discipline. He expressed his preference for a committee small enough so that each member would feel a sense of personal responsibility for his action, even though the committee should be composed of those who were most strongly committed against him, rather than to have it go before the entire Conference, where members could hide behind each other. To one who reads the story more than half a century later, when all the heat of controversy and all the personal animosities that entered into the case at the time have passed away, the foregoing appears as an altogether fair and reasonable request. But again his request was refused!

     It has been said by an eminent writer that “Law is not law if it violates the principles of eternal justice.” And certainly “the principles of eternal justice” were so involved in this case that, from the present point of view, it is difficult to see how, with any regard for those principles, all the foregoing requests could have been denied. We are not surprised that Mr. Roberts, writing of these decisions nearly twenty years afterward, should have said:
 

     All this, we know, sounds more like the proceedings of the English “High Commission” In the days of James the Second, and Charles the First, than like the doings of a Conference of Christian ministers, presided over by a godly Bishop, in the nineteenth century. Macaulay says of those Commissioners, who covered themselves with infamy, and sent many a godly minister to beggary or to prison: “They were themselves at once prosecutors and judges.”

     But the facts that we here relate have never been called in question.

     These are the conditions and circumstances under which Mr. Roberts was finally subjected to trial. Any one who carefully considers them can not fail to see that his enemies had done all they could do, and still have the semblance of formal ecclesiastical proceedings, to block the wheels of justice. “Nazaritism” must be stamped out at any cost; Roberts was a leader among the alleged “Nazarites ;“ therefore it had been predetermined to strike at the head of the offensive system, and when the blow was about to be given it was very necessary to preclude the possibility of effective self-defense on the part of the man chosen for sacrifice. How otherwise can such wanton disregard for personal rights and for “the principle of eternal justice” be accounted for?

[1] “New School Methodism.”
[2] See page 223.
[3] “Why Another Sect?” pp. 160-168.