No religious meetings outside the ordinary services of the Church could be held without a license under the Toleration Act; and those taking part in such meetings, in order to secure the right to hold them, had to register themselves as Dissenters. This law extended to America, and so the first Methodist Church in the United States was adorned with that very unecclesiastical bit of architecture-- a chimney. When a Methodist church was built it had to disguise itself as a house in order to secure the right to exist. W. H. Fitchett, "Wesley and His Century."
