Lincoln Among the Methodists

While not a professed member of any religious denomination, the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and the Methodist Episcopal Church of his time is important, both in terms of their views on the abolition of slavery and the political rise of the number of Methodists in the United States. This article charts the course of that relationship from before Lincoln’s Presidency, his election campaign against Peter Cartwright ... this was when the rise of Methodism was to have serious implications politically because of thebrapid size, growth, and moral views of the church

Horace Walpole and the Methodists

In England between 1739 and 1775, opposition to the Methodist movement and its leadership-especially John Wesley (1703-1791), his brother Charles (1707-1788), George Whitefield (1714-1770). and Lady Selina Shirley, Countess of Huntingdon (1707-1791)-assumed three distinct forms: Anglican bishops prohibited Methodist preachers from conducting services in Established churches; mobs, instigated by Anglican vicars, rioted at Society meetings; beginning around 1739 and continuing even into the nineteenth century, a steady stream of anti-Methodist pamphleteers poured forth invective and twisted Biblical evidence in an effort to expose what they generally concluded to be political traitors, religious heretics, and empty-minded enthusiasts. These opponents, although achieving temporary victories in the first area, never really succeeded even in slowing the advance of the movement. Denied access to Anglican churches, the Wesleys, Whitefield, and Landy Huntingdon established their own chapels and meeting-houses throughout the kingdom; in fact, by 1785, Charles Wesley could write to John concerning the abrupt change in the overall attitude of Anglican bishops: At present, some of them are quite friendly toward us, particularly towards you. The churches are all open to us, and never could there be less pretence for a separation. And, at the risk of over-simplification (but nevertheless an accurate judgment). the scurrilous anti-Methodist broadsides amounted to little beyond a massive heap of bad prose and verse from the pens of literary nonentities: Thomas Whiston, AB., Rev. Zachary Grey, LL.D., Aquila Smyth, William Bowman, M.A, Joseph Trapp, D.D., Dr. Daniel Waterland, William Fleetwood, Gent., Joseph Hart, Arthur Bedford, M.A, J. Maud, M.A, John Parkhurst, M.A., Thomas Green, M.A., Thomas Griffith, M.A, Alexander Jephson, AB., John Langhorne, and countless others. However, reaction to Methodism and its leaders was not the exclusive property of hacks or Anglican clergymen, nor was it always totally negative. The literati and persons of high wit contributed thought-provoking and varied points of view to the discussion

“Chieftain, Farewell”: Bishop Matthew Simpson’s Funeral Address to Abraham Lincoln

This article reflects back on the historic oration by Methodist Bishop Matthew Simpson at the funeral of Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois in 1865. Matthew Simpson was one of the most prominent orators of his day and had built up political connections during the Lincoln Presidency. Bishop Simpson in many ways represents the rising respectability of Methodism in the United States as its influence grew and Methodism became more acceptable among society and in political circles. Simpson even represents a form of Christian nationalism which emerges from his funeral address and the way he portrays the “martyred” president

Laurent series expansion of a class of massive scalar one-loop integrals up to {\cal O}(\ep^2) in terms of multiple polylogarithms

In a recent paper we have presented results for a set of massive scalar one-loop master integrals needed in the NNLO parton model description of the hadroproduction of heavy flavors. The one--loop integrals were evaluated in n=4-2\ep dimension and the results were presented in terms of a Laurent series expansion up to {\cal O}(\ep^2). We found that some of the \ep^2 coefficients contain a new class of functions which we termed the $L$ functions. The $L$ functions are defined in terms of one--dimensional integrals involving products of logarithm and dilogarithm functions. In this paper we derive a complete set of algebraic relations that allow one to convert the $L$ functions of our previous approach to a sum of classical and multiple polylogarithms. Using these results we are now able to present the \ep^2 coefficients of the one-loop master integrals in terms of classical and multiple polylogarithms.Comment: 32 pages, Latex, references added, matches published versio