History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

Snethen located upon his farm on the Linganore, Frederick County, Md., 1814. He preserved his
confidence in and his social intimacy with Asbury, which he fully reciprocated. No two men perhaps
of the early period talked with such freedom to each other, and none more closely on the questions
of unlimited episcopal prerogatives, Snethen admonishing him as to "his English prejudices," and
he bears witness that Asbury always heard him patiently, for he soon discovered that Snethen's
convictions could not be controlled. It won Asbury's respect, but he took care that he should not be
placed in positions of influence for their propagation. The following from Snethen's pen in 1822
showed his liberal views, and gave him occasion in a kind of parable to disclose a pertinent fact in
his own history. "The bishops will make the presiding elders and the elders the bishops. Mutual
interests will give rise to mutual fears. No sensibilities are more instinctive than those which belong
to ambition. All this commerce for places may be carried on by dumb signals or indirect hints. A
bishop [Asbury] once said to a preacher [Snethen] that his colleague [Whatcoat] proposed him for
a certain district [Eldership] but I said you were too much of a republican. The preacher was indeed
too much of an independent man to be won by such artifice, but he was a young man, and was more
intent upon the improvement of his mind than desirous of office. The time was not yet come to try
him to the uttermost, nor is it yet come to try other men so but come it surely will, if the present
unbounded prerogative remain."
"I rejoice to think," Asbury says in September, 1808, "that there will be, perhaps, four or five
hundred camp-meetings this year; may this year outdo all former years in the conversion of precious
souls to God!" Snethen introduced them in Maryland, and his own preaching at some of them was
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a marvel of spiritual power and overwhelming eloquence then and in later years. In Georgia he
writes, January, 1809 — "We (McKendree, companion) are riding in a poor thirty-dollar chaise, in
partnership, two bishops of us, but it must be confessed it tallies well with the weight of our purses:
what bishops! well: but we hear great news, and we have great times," etc. It must be confessed that
the secret springs of a godly ambition are a poor compensation to offset such material disadvantages.
February 1 "Opened the Virginia Conference. We had eighty-four preachers present, sixty of them
the most pleasing, promising young men; seventeen preachers were admitted; in all the conference
there are but three married men." Boehm refers to this fact. It was a Conference after his own heart
— he saw military efficiency and obedience in a ministry of celibates. Other citations will show his
irrepressible sarcasm over the married men. June, 1809 "I have as much as I can bear in body and
mind. I see what has been doing for nine years past to make Presbyterian Methodists." He was a
rabid episcopo-phile. July— "Such roads, such rains, and such lodgings! Why should I wish to stay
in this land? I have no possessions or babes to bind me to the soil; what are called the comforts of
life I rarely enjoy; the wish to live an hour such a life as this would be strange to so suffering, so
toil-worn a wretch. But God is with me and souls are my reward: I may yet rejoice, yea, and will
rejoice." October, 1809 "I am continually at prayer; but a certain fiend assaults me without ceasing
— this is for my humiliation." Like Paul, he had his thorn in the flesh, unknown to any other mortal.
So he is constantly throwing open the windows of his heart. In this and his prayer seasons he differed
widely from Wesley, whose Journal is barren of these introspections of soul-service and struggle.
He too had an experience, but he did not tell it for the inspection of future generations except in the
Band meetings. Asbury's "experience" is known almost from day to day. He is up in Massachusetts,
June, 1810 — "at Warren my audience gave me a little of their attention. Our preachers get wives
and a home, and run to their dears almost every night." June, 1811, he reads Adam Clarke, "and am
amused as well as instructed. He indirectly unChristianizes all old bachelors. Woe is me!" Also same