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

charge of the work in Georgia. He began to deteriorate, and going from bad to worse, he was
expelled in 1792; and in 1794, he shot Major Forsyth, the Marshall of the Federal Court in Georgia,
while attempting to serve a writ upon him. Concerning him, Mr. Asbury says: "He has been speaking
against me to preachers and people, and writing to Mr. Wesley and Dr. Coke; and being thereby the
source of most of the mischief that has followed. He is now in jail for killing the major. A petition
is prepared declaring him to have shown marks of insanity before he did this act. The poor
Methodists must unjustly be put to the rack on his account, although he has been expelled two years.
I have had my opinion of him nine years, and gave Dr. Coke my thoughts of him before his
ordination. I pity and pray for him, that if his life is given to justice, his soul may yet be saved." At
the appointment at Allen's, in North Carolina, Mr. Asbury remarked: "The people here are famous
for talking about religion, and here and there is a horse thief among them."
Beverly Allen made his escape from prison, and went to Logan county, Kentucky, then an asylum
for outlaws. Here he professed the doctrine of Universalism. He taught a school; and young Peter
Cartwright was one of his pupils. His last end was in darkness and despair: he said, he could make
the mercy of God cover every case but his own. See the Autobiography of the Rev. Peter Cartwright,
p. 28.
Mr. Ignatius Pigman seems to have been a native of what was then Frederick county in Maryland,
raised near the Potomac among the mountains. He began to travel in 1780; and was about the most
pleasing and persuasive preacher that the Methodists then had. Mr. Ware couples him with Caleb
Boyer as a great extemporizer; and while Boyer was the Paul, Pigman was the eloquent Apollos of
the Methodist connection at that day. In 1788 he located to provide for his family. In 1800 Mr.
Asbury met him at his brother's, Mr. Joshua Pigman, and remarked, "Art thou he? Ah! But Oh! how
fallen! how changed from what I knew thee once! Lord, what is man if left to himself!" This
language seems to imply a moral lapse; but what caused or constituted it, we know not. Mr. Pigman
went to New Orleans, and engaged in speculation in flour, about 1812; and it is said that he lost all
the money he ever accumulated, and some suppose that he lost future happiness also. A nephew of
his defended the Rev. Jacob Gruber, when he was prosecuted in Maryland, about 1818, for preaching
a sermon calculated, as was alleged, to incite the slaves to rebellion. This trial, which was published,
is one of the greatest curiosities relating to the jurisprudence of our country.
Mr. James Haw volunteered to go to Kentucky in 1786, as an elder: he had been previously a
pioneer in Western Pennsylvania. In 1791, he was returned as located. When James O'Kelly's views
were spread in Kentucky, he became favorable to them; and was regarded as disaffected towards the
views of the great body of the Methodists. The chasm between him and them widened; and he finally
became a pastor over a Presbyterian congregation in 1801, in Cumberland, Tennessee, when the
great revival of religion began in that region. He ended his days among the Presbyterians.
Mr. Henry Metcalf, of the South, was a good man, of a sorrowful spirit, and under constant
heaviness. When he was near his end he got out of his bed, kneeled down, and thus died in prayer,
on his knees -- this was in 1784.
Mr. Samuel Dudley was a useful preacher, that located in 1788.