History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

to his death a bosom friend and counselor. March, 1805, — " We had a meeting in Doctor Jennings'
house," New London, Va. It is the first mention of this afterward distinguished man in Methodism.
October — "Saw Moses Black and his wife — he about forty and she fifteen: such are the wise
contracts Methodist preachers sometimes make." He had been reading Haweis' "Church History" and
says: "It is the author's opinion that the evangelists were chief, superintending, episcopal men: aye,
so say I: and they prescribed forms of discipline, and systematized codes of doctrine." He eagerly
caught at everything to fortify his own authority. Haweis was chaplain to the Countess of
Huntingdon, Whitefield's friend, and a stanch clergyman of the Church of England. Asbury believed
in himself and his methods, and his Journals are punctuated with readings to confirm him in them.
He yielded his deepest convictions to them, and hence, at the close of his eventful career, could with
a good conscience appeal to the "purity of his intentions." No sober historian would think of
questioning them. He believed he found in Scripture and reason and his own experience abundant
testimony that he was right. This History will be written in vain if it does not show that his main
premise is unsupported by Scripture and reason, and that his experience should have taught him that
posterity in his own Church would cut the very sinews of his episcopal prerogatives and anomalous
polity, though it has taken one hundred years of struggle without fully accomplishing it.
In February, 1806, this pithy sentence, "Religion will do great things; but it does not make
Solomons." Georgia, November, 1806 — "Behold, here is a bell over the gallery, and cracked, too;
may it break! It is the first I ever saw in America in a house of ours; I hope it will be the last." March,
1807, Chester, Del. — " I find that unpleasant prejudices have been excited by the publication of a
pamphlet on succession in the church; the author is one Kewley, who went from us." June "And must
I walk through the seven conferences, and travel seven thousand miles in ten months?" Pennsylvania,
July — "It is but too manifest that the success of our labors, more especially at campmeetings, has
roused a spirit of persecution against us; riots, fines, stripes, perhaps prisons and death, if we do not
give up our camp-meetings: we shall never abandon them," etc. July, 1808, western Pennsylvania
— "I had a conversation with Asa Shinn respecting his removal to Baltimore." Shinn was admitted
on trial in 1801, a young man of promise, but not of robust physique. Snethen knew him well. He
was a native of New Jersey. Judge his surprise and that of his friend when he was read out for his
first appointment to Redstone, western Pennsylvania, as a junior preacher to Jesse Stoneman, with
Thornton Flewing as presiding elder, in the wild, mountainous country beyond the Alleghenies.
Snethen says that he pitied him. It was one of Asbury's methods of testing young men, and
sometimes rather an evidence of his regard than otherwise. He had no horse and no money to provide
one, so before the brethren dispersed Snethen took up a collection and procured one for him, for it
was the only method of reaching his distant appointment. He proved in after years to be one of the
greatest theologians, metaphysicians, and logicians of early Methodism, and as a Methodist
Reformer of 1827-30, his arguments of pen and tongue were feared and respected, while his integrity
of purpose no one dared question. Asbury now consults him before transferring him to Baltimore,
perhaps in amends for his previous rough handling. The next year he is in Baltimore, as associate
with Robert R. Roberts, afterward, as found, Bishop, and S. Bunn for the city stations, and Nicholas
Snethen at Fell's Point, whither he was sent by Asbury, Snethen having just married, an almost
reprehensible thing in a preacher with the Bishop, while Fell's Point in the far east of the city was
unable to support a married man. It led not long after to Snethen's enforced retirement from the
active work. The year following, or in 1810, Roberts is named first, with Snethen and Buroli at City
Station, composed of Light and Eutaw Street churches.