History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

een made to burn the college." He is down in Virginia, in North Carolina, and in Charleston, S. C.
He was expecting to meet Dr. Coke, as it was found when the thread of history disclosed his
departure for Charleston from Barbados. He held the Conference and rode out into the country. "We
were out of bread at P____'s, and we found our own stores of use. We had to send one of our weary
horses eight miles to fetch the flour from the mill. Thursday, February 26 — Rode to Bruten's and
enjoyed uncommon happiness in God. Some time in the night Dr. Coke came in. He had landed in
Charleston about three hours after I left the city; the next day he and myself both spoke at Ridgell's."
They traveled and preached together until they reached Grant's in Georgia, where the first
Conference for the year was held March 9, 1789. Asbury names an important item of business: "On
Thursday we appointed a committee to procure five hundred acres of ground for the establishment
of a school in the state of Georgia. Conference being ended, we directed our hasty steps back to
Charleston. . . . Sunday, 15th — We reached the city, having ridden about two hundred miles in
about five days and two hours. Here I received a "bitter pill" from one of my greatest friends. "Praise
the Lord for my trials also — may they all be sanctified!" The italics are his own.
A new paragraph is needed for an answer to the question, What was this bitter pill he received?
Preliminary, C. S. Nutter, to whom the Church is indebted for reprints of a number of the earliest
Minutes and Disciplines, says in a preface to that of 1788, the changes of which are noted in the last
chapter, "All efforts to find a copy of the third edition of the discipline, that of 1787, have failed; it
is, however, contained in this edition." Then, after giving internal evidence of its truth, he says,
"From these data we infer that the edition of 1787 was nearly, if not exactly, the same as this [that
of 1788], to the end of the thirty-first section." It of course included the historical changes as to the
origin of the Church Asbury introduced, as well as the substitution of the term bishop for
superintendent. The Minutes and the Discipline had no doubt reached Wesley some time during the
last half of 1787 or the first half of 1788. It is not supposable that Asbury sent them to him — their
personal relations at this particular period were far from amicable, and the assumptions they
contained he must have known would be disapproved by Wesley; but he had correspondents enough
in America, and some of them not in accord with Asbury's methods, to furnish the printed and the
unprinted doings in America. Speculation as to his reflections on reading them are here indulged.
Dr. Coke must also have received the Minutes and the Discipline, but whether synchronously, or
whether they had opportunity of conferring over them, cannot be affirmed. Coke remained in
England about a year, or from July, 1787, to August, 1788. Next to Coke, Henry Moore seems to
have shared quite fully the confidence of Wesley in these years, and therefore he knew his mind as
to these transactions, if any one did. Happily he has furnished some proof of it. He says: "A letter
now before me, and which he (Wesley) wrote when I was with him, will clearly show how much he
felt that deviation from the simplicity which is in Christ, in those whom he much loved. It was
written to Mr. Asbury, and is dated London, September 20, 1788. After speaking of some general
subjects, he adds:
There is, indeed, a wide difference between the relation wherein you stand to the Americans and
the relation wherein I stand to all the Methodists. You are the elder brother of the American
Methodists I am under God the father of the whole family. Therefore, I naturally care for you all in
a manner no other person can do. Therefore, I in a measure provide for you all; for the supplies
which Dr. Coke provides for you, he could not provide were it not for me — were it not that I not
only permit him to collect, but support him in so doing.