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

of them has been tried; as to untried measures, we cannot rise above conjecture. No doubt there had
been those who had been blessed under their ministry, who did not unite with them, because they
were not invested with what were considered full ministerial powers. On the other hand, as they were
considered a branch of the Church of England, and many of them went to that church to receive the
ordinances, and cultivated friendship with her pious ministers and members -- this gave them great
influence with them; and many serious Church people, that desired spiritual religion, fell into the
ranks of the Methodists. Many of this description might not have been Methodists but for the relation
they sustained to each other, and the friendship that subsisted between them.
Whatever disadvantages the Methodists of this country had labored under for want of church
organization, ordination, and ordinances, it is manifest that much had been accomplished in
spreading "Scriptural holiness" in this land, -- in opening the eyes of the blind; and in preparing a
people to serve God in the beauty of holiness; and to worship him in the Upper Temple. The standard
of Methodism had been set up in New York, Long Island, Staten Island, New Rochelle, and
Ashgrove. There were Methodist societies in all the counties in West Jersey, and in several of the
counties of East Jersey. They were found in Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, Bucks, Montgomery,
Chester, Lancaster, Berk's, York, -- and in the southern tier of counties as far as Bedford, and the
Redstone settlement beyond the Allegheny; they had formed a circuit on the Juniata river, also. They
had established themselves in every county in Delaware and Maryland. They were to be found in
nearly all the counties of Virginia, east of the Allegheny Mountains. They were also on the
headwaters of the Holston river in the southeast corner of the state. They had spread over North
Carolina, with the exception of some of the southeastern counties, and some few of the
southwestern; and were bearing down on South Carolina, and Georgia, into both of which states
preachers were sent the following year. Such was the territory of country over which they had spread
in the course of twenty-five years They had founded a number of chapels, such as Wesley Chapel
in New York, one in New Jersey in 1773, supposed to be Trenton, in Mercer county, -- the New
Mills House, and a third in Salem, Salem county. In Pennsylvania, they had bought St. George's,
were using Bethel in Montgomery; also, Old Forrest, in Berk's, -- had erected Benson's, and the
Valley, or Grove, in Chester county. In Delaware state, Forrest, or Thomas, Barratt's, White's Chapel,
Bethel and Moore's, in Sussex county; Cloud's, Blackiston's, Friendship, in Thoroughfare Neck; and
Wesley Chapel, in Dover. In Maryland, the Pipe or Sam's Creek, Bush Forrest, Gunpowder, Back
River Neck, Middle River Neck, Fell's Point; one in Baltimoretown, Kent Meeting house, Mountain
Meeting house, Bennett's, Hunt's, Deer Creek, Dudley's, Tuckahoe, Quantico, Annamessex Chapel,
and one still lower in Somerset county, Line Chapel, Bolingbroke Chapel, Newtown -- Chester, or
Chestertown Chapel, and Werton Chapel. In Virginia, Yeargin's, Lane's, Boisseau's, Mabry's,
Merritt's, Easlin's, White's, Stony Hill, Mumpin's, Rose Creek, Adams', Ellis', Mason's, Howel's,
Nansemond, and some sort of houses in Norfolk and Portsmouth. In North Carolina, Nuthush,
Cypress, Pope's, Taylor's, Henley's, Lee's, Watson's, Parish's, and Jones'. Here were more than sixty
houses of worship claimed and occupied by the Methodists. True, they were humble temples, none
of them were stuccoed, or frescoed; and yet the mystic shekina, the glory, was manifested in them.
It is manifest to every one who reads the account of the spread of Methodism in this country, that
it took more rapidly in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Delaware, than it did in
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. The cause of this cannot be found in the preachers, nor
in the doctrines taught, which were the same north and south. A minor cause may, possibly, be found