Methodist Protestant Church.
This branch of the Methodist family is fearfully involved in the sin of slaveholding.—Slavery has silenced the voice of the church organ. Slaveholders have free access to its communion. The discipline contains a very disgraceful clause in relation to colored members. Article 12, Sec. 1st secures the right of suffrage to all male members who are WHITE. Article 7, Sec. 3, gives to each annual conference power to make for colored members of the church “such terms of suffrage” as they may think proper. In the same article the apparently neutral, but really pro-slavery character of this church is seen in the following words: “But neither the General Conference nor any annual conference shall assume power to interfere with the constitutional powers of the civil governments, or with the operations of the civil laws.” The civil law is the highest law recognized in this article, and where that makes chattels of men, this church is forbidden to interfere. In these quotations the principles of caste and lower-lawism, are most clearly inculcated. It is with surprise and sorrow that we find such odious features in the discipline of a church which boasts of MUTUAL RIGHTS.