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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
The Secretary has asked me, when inviting me to this meeting, to speak “of the nature of Methodism's contribution to Church Unity, or at any rate something with a definite Methodist tinge”. In trying to comply with this request, let me make it clear that I shall speak as a Methodist, but only on my own behalf and without any kind of, or even hope for, official sanction; and I shall try to be definite. The Anglo-Saxon art of understatement is not easily mastered by one who is not British-born; to say, for instance, “I don't want to hurry you”, when you are anxious to get rid of your visitor quickly, or “I shall not be a moment”, when you intend to keep him waiting for the next few hours, or “I don't want to be uncharitable”, when introducing the most devastating criticism of your opponent's view—in short, to indulge in what a recent article in Lilliput called “phrops”, is a charisma, which, alas has not been given to me. Yet I will endeavour to speak the truth in love. My thoughts go back to one who, nearly ten years ago, spoke to the Methodist Society in this room and, though not a Methodist himself, gave me my earliest and most valued introduction to the Wesley hymns; who, second to none in his determination and outspokenness as a Free Churchman, yet commanded the affection and respect of Christians in many different camps and even had a requiem mass said for him in a Roman Catholic Church: the late Bernard Manning.
page 40 note 1 Archbishop Wake (1718), quoted in Dr Bell's Christian Unity, p. 62.
page 43 note 1 Cf. Bell, op. cit., p. 186; ibid., p. 66, the quotation from Archbishop Wake: “The Lutherans do this very thing. Many of them communicate not only in prayers but take the Communion with us; and we never enquire whether they believe consubstantiation, or even pay any worship to Christ as present with the elements, so long as their outward actions are the same with our own, and they give no offence to any with their opinions.” A significant concession, though hardly satisfactory from the Lutheran point of view in which agreement of “opinion” would always have to take precedence before uniformity of “outward actions”.1 It is interesting to note the comment of Sharp's son and biographer: “No doubt can be made but his reason for this was the ill use that would have been made of such a concession by our dissenters at home; and perhaps by some others, too, who, not considering the difference there is between the case of the Protestant Churches abroad and our dissenting congregations here in England, might argue loosely from it, that he could in point of conscience, were that only considered, occasionally conform to the Presbyterian way of worship in our meeting houses” Bell, op. cit., p. 45).
page 44 note 1 It is interesting to note the comment of Sharp's son and biographer: “No doubt can be made but his reason for this was the ill use that would have been made of such a concession by our dissenters at home; and perhaps by some others, too, who, not considering the difference there is between the case of the Protestant Churches abroad and our dissenting congregations here in England, might argue loosely from it, that he could in point of conscience, were that only considered, occasionally conform to the Presbyterian way of worship in our meeting houses” (Bell, op. cit., p. 45).