A History Of The Rise Of Methodism In America - Media Sabda Org

violent persecutor, ran into the house and pointed a loaded gun at Mr. Garrettson, but had not power
to put the trigger; but, a few days after, he shot his brother, because he entertained the Methodist
preachers, and slightly wounded his body. While he labored on this circuit, there was a glorious
gathering of souls to Christ, which was cause of daily rejoicing to him while traveling through the
forests of North Carolina.
Mr. Asbury spent the year, until December, around Baltimore and Annapolis, preaching as he had
opportunity, and attending quarterly meetings. In August of this year, he was informed that he was
chosen to preach in the Garrettson Church in Harford county. The original church, it seems, was built
by an ancestor of the Rev. Freeborn Garrettson, and was the first church built in Maryland about A.
D. 1600. Mr. Asbury did not accept this call; he would not leave the Methodists.
In this year Mr. Asbury was at the house of Mr. Shadrach Turner, near Bladensburg, and received
the following strange account:
"A person came in the form of a man to the house of another in the night. The man of the house
asked him what he wanted. He replied, 'This will be the bloodiest year that ever was known.' The
other asked him how he knew that. He answered, 'It is as true as that your wife is now dead in her
bed.' The man of the house went back, and to his great surprise found his wife dead, and the stranger
disappeared."
Several of the Turners were among the first Methodists of this region; Samuel and Susanna Turner
went to rest in 1829, after more than fifty years spent in religion.
In 1777, Mr. Rodda was appointed to Kent Circuit, Eastern Shore of Maryland. Here he very
imprudently circulated King George's proclamation, which so exasperated the friends of American
liberty against him, that he was obliged to leave his circuit, and, with the aid of some slaves, was
carried to the British fleet, then in the Chesapeake Bay, and was, by the English, sent to Philadelphia,
from thence to England, where he continued to labor, in connection with Mr. Wesley, until 1781,
when he retired from the work.
Mr. Rodda's conduct was highly imprudent, and caused trouble and suffering to his brethren, both
preachers and people, that stayed in this country. It was, no doubt, in part, the cause of the arrest and
abduction of Judge White, by the light horse patrol; and of the ill treatment of Messrs. Hartley and
Garrettson, the following year, in Queen Anne's county; so the cause of Mr. Littlejohn, who was an
Englishman, leaving Kent Circuit in 1778, and retiring into local life. John Littlejohn was one of the
most promising men that entered into the Methodist itinerancy in this country, in the last century;
he was a second John Dickens, and, perhaps, greatly his superior in pulpit eloquence. But, aside from
this rash act of Mr. Rodda, we have never heard anything alleged against him while he labored in
America.
On the last evening of this year, some of the officers of Howe's army acted a play in New York,
called "The Devil to Pay in the West Indies." After this was performed they made themselves drunk,
and went reeling and yelling through the street. Passing by Wesley Chapel, where the Methodists
were holding watch meeting, they went in. The officer that personated the devil, had a cow's hide