History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

strength of Methodism was in Maryland and Virginia, and the pertinence of this fact will presently
be recognized as the Conference of 1779 comes to be considered.
Before recording its eventful transactions, observation must be made of its principal actor, Francis
Asbury, as a student. Studious in his early manhood, as has been found, when he came to America
and the vision of future greatness loomed up before him with the intimation that comes to most men
of genius, he gave himself to the cultivation of his naturally strong mind with unflagging diligence.
One thing alone seemed to bias him in his choice of reading, — his hierarchal views of church
government. He became fixed in these principles by careful reading and copying of Bishop Potter's
work, a pronounced successionist and high churchman. The Bible he mastered not in English only,
but fluently read it in both Hebrew and Greek. He stopped a night with a Hebrew in his early
American ministry that he might have the advantage of Hebraic learning from him, and he expresses
his gratification. Otherwise his reading was almost omnivorous, most of all along lines defensive of
his preconceived opinions. There is no note, however, that in his travels he ever picked up a stray
volume of Shakespeare for perusal, and in this he was unlike his immortal exemplar, John Wesley,
in whose library a well-thumbed and carefully annotated volume of the poet of nature was found by
an unlettered preacher, and who, shocked by the profanation of the place by the book, incontinently
destroyed it, or otherwise the world might have had the benefit of Wesley's analytical mind on this
classic production. So soon as Asbury reached a harbor after a day's travel and found time to open
his saddle-pockets, social courtesies were brief; he sat down to read and write. His Journal is full of
the records of books being read; and in later years, when he took the care of all the chapels on him
and the whole boundless continent was his circuit, it was one of his acute methods of keeping
himself in authority, and preserving his magnetic touch with the preachers and a few leading laymen,
by incessant letter-writing, much of it necessarily official; but more of it outreaching antenna. He
devoured theology and history, his mind was stored with incidents, and he was a ready and
instructive conversationist when he thought it timely to communicate, and he was equally at home
and self-possessed in all grades of society. It is computed that he wrote an average of a thousand
letters a year. This correspondence took in, specially after the English preachers retired, Wesley and
Shadford, and a few others, not to name his mother, early widowed and in part dependent on him for
support, a filial obligation he never neglected. For while he accepted celibacy rather than be
hampered in his control of a continent, he gallantly begs the pardon of the sex, in one place in his
Journal, for not marrying; and after the decease of his mother he helped for long years the widow of
John Dickins, on the principle, it is said, that every man ought to do something toward the support
of one woman. Reference has been made to his inflexible views of Episcopacy and how early it
absorbed his head, heart, and conscience. In February, 1775, this note occurs in his Journal: "I
received a letter from Miss G. (Gilbert) at Antigua (West Indies), in which she informs me that Mr.
G. (Gilbert), her father and lay missionary, was going away; and as there are about three hundred
members in society, she entreats me to go and labor amongst them. And as Mr. Wesley has given
his consent, I feel inclined to go and take one of the young men with me. But there is one obstacle
in the way — the administration of the ordinances. It is possible to get the ordination of a presbytery,
but this would be incompatible with Methodism: which would be an effectual bar in my way." [6]
This suggestive note does not seem to have been cited by any other historian, and for the reason that
it makes plain that to Asbury, Methodism was not primarily a self-witnessing doctrine and a personal
spiritual life, as Wesley affirmed, though he emphasized these, — as it was a sect, a Church, with
a ministry of apostolical succession, as Wesley denied; and he will be found bending all his energies