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He carried the standard far to the front, and planted the flowing pennant on rocky ramparts where all the world could see. To carry the flag further was the work of others yet to come.

It was only in the year Seventeen Hundred Eighty-four, when Wesley was eighty-one years old, that he formally broke loose from the mother- church and Methodism was given a charter from the State. At this time John Wesley announced himself as a “Scriptural Episcopus,” or a bishop by divine right, greatly to the consternation of his brother Charles. But the morning stars still sang together, even after he had ordained his comrade, Asbury, “Bishop of America” and conferred the title of bishop on a dozen others. It was always, however, carefully explained that they were merely Methodist-Episcopal bishops and not Episcopal bishops. A year before his death Wesley issued an order that no Methodist services should be held at the hours of the regular church service, and that no Methodist bishop should wear a peculiar robe, have either a fixed salary, residence or estate, nor should he on any account allow any one to address him as “My Lord.”

It was a very happy life he led–so full of work that there was no time for complaint. The constant horseback riding kept his system in perfect health. At eighty-five he said: “I never have had more than a half-hour’s depression in my life. My controlling mood has been one of happiness, thankfulness and joy.” Wesley endeavored not to make direct war upon the Established Church–he hoped it would reform itself. He did not know that men with fixed and fat incomes seldom die and never resign; and his innocence in thinking he could continue on his course of organizing “Methodist Societies,” and still keep his place within the Church, reveals his lack of logic. Moreover, he never had enough imagination to see that the Methodist Church would itself become great and strong and powerful and rich, and be an institution very much like the one from which in his eighty-first year he at last broke away. Charles Wesley and Whitefield died members of the Church of England, and were buried in consecrated ground; but John Wesley passed peacefully out in his eighty-eighth year, requesting that his body be buried in City Road Chapel, in the plot of ground that he by his life, love and work had consecrated. And it was so done.