ABSTRACT
This chapter explains that the secession of the Calvinistic Methodists from the Anglican Church in 1811 helped ensure the numerical triumph of the Nonconformists over the Church by the mid-nineteenth century, so that Nonconformists felt justified in claiming Wales as their own. Methodism in separating from the Church lacked any formal distinctive declaration of belief, since it had no real quarrel with the 39 articles of the Anglican Church. The tendency instead was to justify its somewhat unorthodox status as a church within a church by recourse to biblical precedent, particularly the early church of the New Testament. Richard Davies' preface to the New Testament in 1567 had set out the case for Protestantism as a return to the old Celtic Church as established through Joseph of Arimathea's preaching. In the case of the new Calvinistic Methodist denomination, it might have been expected that it would seek to distance itself from the Anglican Church from which it had just separated.
