ably the matter was submitted by the bishops to
all the Conferences, and, as Bangs remarks, " This
waSj it seems, agreed upon by the several Annual
Conferences which had been held this year." '

The records of " the first regular General Confer-
ence," as Lee terms it, have not been preserved in
separate form, but what was done was incorporated
in the Discipline of 1792, and appears in the works
of contemporaneous writers, and particularly in Lee's
History. Lee informs us that, —

" On the first day of November, 1792, the first regular
General Conference began in Baltimore. Our preachers who
had been received into full connection came together from ail
parts of the United States where we had any circuits formed,
with an expectation that something of great importance
would take place in the Connection in consequence of that
Conference. The preachers generally thought that in all
probability there would never be another Conference of that
kind, at which all the preachers in connection might attend.
The work was spreading through all the United States and the
different Territories, and was likely to increase more and more,
so that it was generally thought that this Conference would
adopt some permanent regulations which would prevent the
preachers in future from coming together in a General Con-
ference. This persuasion brought out more of the preachers
than otherwise would have attended.
