questions of law coming up in the regular business of those bodies, subject to certain conditions of application and appeal. The clause concerning law questions in Annual Conferences was adopted by yeas 98, nays That concerning Quarterly Conferences, "by a decided majority." (Journal Gen. Conf., 1840, pp. 24, 121, 138.) 5. 10. When a legal decision has been duly rendered, the application of it to the facts and the case in hand is with the Conference. But the Conference may not reverse the decision, under color of applying the law. If dissatisfied, the Conference may take an appeal from the decision, but it must govern the case pending. 11. When a member of an Annual Conference, in good standing, demands a local relation, the Conference is obliged to grant it to him.* 12. The Conference-year commences when the appointments are announced in the Annual Conference, and continues until the announcing of the appointments at the next ensuing Conference. (Waugh.) 13. A preacher who has been located, with or without his consent, may at any session be reädmitted to his former position and standing, by a majority of the Conference, upon present Journal Gen. Conf., 1840, p. 107. ing the usual recommendation from the Quarterly Conference. 14. A traveling preacher, to be entitled to a supernumerary relation, must be disabled by affliction in his own person. The Conference may not vote him such a relation because his family is afflicted, or other circumstances embarrass him for the itinerancy.* 15. Methodism is union all over: union in exchange of preachers, union and exchange of sentiments, union and exchange of interests: we must draw resources from the center to the circumference. (Asbury.) The removal of a preacher from one Conference to another is frequently as necessary for the general good as any other act of the appointing power. It has been farther thought, if a preacher wishes to remove from one Conference to another for his own accommodation, he has a right to demand it; and that he is "oppressed" if the supposed right be not acknowledged; and that he has, as he styles it, only to "take a transfer;" or, without asking for that instrument, to take his family and go into whatever Conference he pleases, without consulting any one, expecting his transfer afterward, as a thing of course. But who does not see, that if such opinions and proceedings be tolerated, general confusion must follow? (Hedding.) A memorial from the New England Conference was *College of Bishops, 1858. addressed to the General Conference of 1840, praying that the following clause be added to the Discipline: "A Bishop shall have no authority to transfer a member of one Conference to another Conference in opposition to the wishes of said member, or in opposition to the wishes of a majority of the members of the Conference to which it is proposed to transfer such member." The committee to whom this memorial was referred, reported by recommending that "the prayer of the memorialists be not granted," and the report was adopted. (Journal, p. 56.) 16. A transferred preacher has his rights and responsibilities in the Conference to which he is transferred, from the date of the transfer by the Bishop making it. But he cannot be counted twice in the same ecclesiastical year, as the basis of General Conference representation, nor vote for General Conference delegates where he is not so counted; neither can he vote twice on the same constitutional question. 17. The General Conference of 1850 made the following deliverance: "That we greatly deplore the evil complained of in reference to transfers from one Conference to another, both on account of the spirit which it involves and its opposition to a fundamental law of Methodism; for while it has been the general usage to station the preachers within the bounds of the Conference of which they are members, still, it is the genius of our system, and the law of our Church, that the Bishops, as General Superintendents of the Church, make such disposition of the itinerant preachers as in their judgment will best serve the whole Church."* The use to which transferring may be put, in an extraordinary case, is given by Bishop Hedding: "The unity and prosperity of the body will depend, under God, in a great degree on the watchful oversight the General Conference shall exercise over the Annual Conferences, But should an Annual Conference do wrong, what power has the General Conference to punish? Administer censure, reproof, and exhortation, as the case may be. But should the majority of an Annual Conference become heretical, or countenance immorality, what can the General Conference do? Other remedies may answer some cases, yet I know of only one that can be constitutionally administered in all cases; that is, let the General Conference command the Bishops to remove the corrupted majority of an Annual Conference to other parts of the work, and scatter them among other Annual Conferences, where they can be governed, and supply their places with better men from other Conferences. But such men would not go at the appointment of the Bishop. Perhaps they would not, personally, but their names and their membership would go where they could be dealt with as their sins should deserve. It is true the Bishops have authority to do this, and in some cases it might be their duty to do it, without the command of the Gen *Journal Gen. Conf., p. 173. eral Conference; yet in ordinary cases they would be likely to hesitate until the General Conference should command them." 18. The law of limitation applies to local preachers who may be employed in pastoral work, as well as to effective traveling preachers-none may remain in the same circuit or station more than four years successively; and the limitation, as to time, applies to the Presiding Elder in supplying the work, as well as to the Bishop. 19. It is a violation of law for a Bishop to continue a preacher in a station or circuit beyond the allowed time, notwithstanding the station or circuit may be divided into two or more stations or circuits.* 20. In all cases where agents are appointed— being members of an Annual Conference-their names must be attached to some District, and in case of complaint, they are responsible to the Presiding Elder thereof. It is not necessary that they should be attached to any Quarterly Conference.† 21. No recommendation from a Quarterly Conference to an Annual Conference is of any force after the session of the Annual Confer * Journal Gen. Conf., 1836, p. 473. |