It pays to read the deed

Thursday, 10.--I looked over the wonderful deed which was lately made here on which I observed 1) it takes up three large skins of parchment and so could not cost less than six guineas; whereas our own deed, transcribed by a friend, would not have cost six shillings; 2) it is verbose beyond all sense and reason, and withal so ambiguously worded that one passage only might find matter for a suit of ten or twelve years in Chancery; 3) it everywhere calls the house a meeting-house, a name which I particularly object to; 4) it leaves no power either to the assistant or me so much as to place or displace a steward; 5) neither I, nor all the Conference, have power to send the same preacher two years together. To crown all, 6) if a preacher is not appointed at the Conference, the trustees and the congregation are to choose one, by most votesl And can anyone wonder I dislike this deed, which tears the Methodist discipline up by the roots?

Is it not strange that any who have the least regard either for me or our discipline should scruple to alter this uncouth deed?

The Journal of John Wesley