Circuit (2)
Circuit.
In the Methodist Episcopal Church, a single church, supplied by a pastor, is called a station; but when two or more appointments, within a definite territory, are united into one charge, under one or more ministers, it is called a "circuit." The English minutes of 1746 give "the first intimation of definite circuits, though it is supposed they existed before. All England was mapped into seven of these itinerant districts." In America the circuit system was universal in the beginning of Methodism, and it is still widely in use in rural districts and in the Western States. — Stevens, History of Methodism, 1, 318. SEE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH.
