History of the M.E. Church, Vol. IV - Media Sabda Org

HISTORY OF THE
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
By Abel Stevens
CHAPTER XV
REVIEW OF THE PERIOD, 1804 --1820:
DEATHS OF WHATCOAT, COKE, ASBURY, AND LEE
Deaths of Preachers -- Whatcoat, Character and Death -- His Grave -- Coke's Death, and Burial
in the Indian Ocean -- Asbury's Estimate of him -- his great Services and Character -- Asbury -- His
Character -- Last Scenes of his Life -- Funeral Ceremonies at the General Conference of 1816 --
Jesse Lee's Death -- His Character -- His Defeat as Candidate for the Episcopate -- His Historical
Rank -- Conclusion
In casting a glance back over these sixteen years, so replete with great characters and
achievements, we are reminded of events which might strike us as catastrophes were it not that they
were in the order of Divine Providence, and therefore in "due season," and illustrations of the
Methodistic maxim that "God calls home his workmen, but carries on his work." Besides the hosts
of men, many of them prominent, who fell by death in the ministerial field, and whose decease has
been noticed, Whatcoat, Coke, Asbury, and Lee have all disappeared from the scene as we close the
period.
I have heretofore sketched the life and character of Whatcoat as fully as the scanty recorded data
[1]
will admit. He sustained his episcopal functions with continual disability, from chronic disease,
but was ever in motion throughout the whole extent of the Church North, South, East, and West. His
beautiful character preached more effectually than his sermons. Peculiarly simple, sober, but serene
and cheerful, living as well as teaching his favorite doctrine of sanctification, extremely prudent in
his administration, pathetically impressive in discourse, and "made perfect through sufferings," he
is pre-eminently the saint in the primitive calendar of American Methodism. In November, 1806,
Asbury wrote to Fleming: "Dear Father Whatcoat, after thirteen weeks' illness -- gravel, stone,
dysentery combined died, a martyr to pain, in all patience and resignation to the will of God. May
we, like him, if we live long, live well, and die like him."
He had "finished his sixth episcopal tour through the work after his consecration," says his
[2]
biographer, "or near that, and, after great suffering, he got an honorable discharge from the Captain
of his salvation, and by his permission came in from his post, which he had faithfully kept for fifty
years." He took refuge at the home of Senator Bassett, Dover, Del., where he died, "in the full
[3]
assurance of faith," say the Minutes, July 5, 1806. "He professed," add his brethren, "the justifying
and sanctifying grace of God, and all that knew him well might say, If a man on earth possessed
these blessings, surely it was Richard Whatcoat."
Nearly a year later Asbury reached Dover, and over his tomb declared that he "knew Richard
Whatcoat, from his own age of fourteen to sixty-two years, most intimately -- his holy manner of life,
in duty at all times, in all places, and before all people, as a Christian and as a minister; his long
suffering as a man of great affliction of body and mind, having been exercised with severe diseases