Conference of 1827.

"Q. Can any additional securities be provided in reference to the character, qualifications, and scriptural orthodoxy of persons proposed as candidates for our ministry?

"A. The Chan-men of Districts are again required, not only to examine very minutely, in their District-Meetings, all persons proposed to travel as Preachers among us, but also to report distinctly in their District-Minutes, for the consideration of the Conference, the opinion of the District-Meeting, after such examination, respecting their health, piety, moral character, ministerial abilities, knowledge and belief of our doctrines, attachment to our discipline, and freedom from debt, as well as from all secular incumbrances. In the same District-Minutes, the Preacher who recommends any candidate shall state his age, and sign a recommendatory character of him, which may forthwith be copied, if the Conference receive such candidate upon trial, into the book provided for that purpose."

"The Conference resolve, that it is the acknowledged right, and, under existing circumstances, the indispensable duty, of every Chairman of a District, to ask all candidates for admission upon trial amongst us, if they believe the doctrine of the Eternal Sonship of our Lord Jesus Christ as it is stated by Mr. Wesley, especially in his Notes upon the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, to be agreeable to the Holy Scriptures; and that also it is the acknowledged right, and, under existing circumstances, the indispensable duty, of the President of the Conference for the time being, to examine particularly upon that doctrine every Preacher proposed to be admitted into full connexion, and to require an explicit and unreserved declaration of his assent to it, as a truth revealed in the inspired oracles."^†