ABSTRACT

Henry Rack has suggested that the Methodists' understanding of the Nineteenth Article enabled them to ignore the whole question of establishment, canon law and all that went with the Church of England. They considered themselves free to assert that membership and zeal for the Church was a matter of upholding Christian truth and life; they were to obey the bishops only in 'things indifferent' and they did not separate so long as they preached the Church's doctrines and attended its worship.2 Bringing to mind John Wesley's comment that 'the clergy who do not preach the Gospel are really the worse dissenters from the church, ,J Dr. Rack added the observation that the situation, in some ways, recalled:

an almost Anabaptist vision of the church, in others it echoes back to the Anglican Puritans of an earlier period and forward to the rebellious Tractarians of a later. At the time it clearly reflects Wesley's polemic against contemporary clergy, whom he felt were betraying the Church of England's true Gospel far more than he was and therefore were practically separating from it, as he was not.4