A Short History Of The Methodists... - Media Sabda Org

We agreed, that if any European Methodist preachers should come over recommended by Mr.
Wesley, and would be subject to the American conference, preach the Methodist doctrine, keep the
circuits they were appointed to, and be subject to Francis Asbury as general assistant, while he stands
approved by Mr. Wesley and the conference, we will receive them; but if they walk contrary to the
above directions, no appointment shall prevent them from being excluded from our connection.
There was a plan laid also for keeping four fast days in the year in each circuit; and the preachers
were directed to write on each Class-paper, "The first Friday after every quarterly meeting is to be
observed as a day of fasting and prayer."
It was a custom among the Methodists formerly, to observe all Fridays in the year as days of
fasting or abstinence; but this custom is not strictly attended to by our societies at present.
We had a gracious revival of religion this year in many of the frontier circuits, and the way was
opening fast for us to enlarge our borders, and to spread the gospel through various places where we
had never been before. The call of the people was great, for more laborers to be sent into the harvest.
Note-Here end the minutes that were formerly taken and kept in manuscript, and not printed until
1795. After this all our annual minutes were printed every year. In the following part of this history,
the printed minutes will be attended to as they came out year after year.
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ENDNOTES
1 Mr. Jarratt was one of the most pious clergymen that I was acquainted with, and his attachment to
the Methodists was very great, and never abated until the Methodists broke off from the Church of
England in 1784, and formed themselves into a regular church His mind then began to be somewhat
turned against them and in some cases he showed too much warmth in his opposition. But through
the greater part of his life, he was a man of great calmness, and of a candid and liberal Sentiment
towards other denominations. He died in peace on the 30th of January 1801, in the 69th year of his
age. Mr. John Coleman once a traveling Methodist preacher, but now a minister of the Protestant
Episcopal Church, published in 1806, a book called Jarratt's Life: and if what he published be true,
and Mr. Jarratt did write the letters just as they are published, they show that he was more severe in
his spirit against the Methodists, than they who knew him ever thought him to be. The book, as far
as it speaks of the Methodists, does no credit to the writer or publisher of it. If Mr. Jarratt had been
living when the book was printed, I am persuaded he would never have consented for the private
letters to have been published.
2 Mr. Coleman published Garrat's Life.