History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

liberal principles. To this Griffith never descended, though afterward honored by his Church in her
legislative assemblies. Both of them long survived. And now an extraordinary character is noted,
John Early, who joined the Virginia Conference in 1807. Blessed with an iron constitution, ardent
mind, and powerful will which made him a dreaded disciplinarian, he was of such stuff as a Bishop
of the Asbury type could have been made. Honest, unflinching, and unpurchasable, he declined
profitable positions from the United States government, saying that he "could not come down" to
them. He was the counselor of Asbury, Bruce, McKendree, and Jesse Lee, a great revivalist, and at
the same time chief founder of Randolph-Macon College, and a candidate for the Episcopacy in
1832, but the sectional feeling, already rife, defeated him. He was a leader in the measures that led
to a division of the Church in 1844, and was president pro tempore of its first General Conference.
In 1854 he was elected a Bishop of the Church South, resigned the position on account of his age
in 1866, and lived long after — one of the lingering representatives of the old regime. William
Capers has been named, but needs mention as one of the most gifted in person and mind of all the
Southern preachers; a friend of the black race, though uncompromisingly for his section and its
issues, elected Bishop, he survived until 1855. Beverly Waugh joined the Baltimore Conference in
1809, rose rapidly in fame as a preacher of well-balanced faculties and amiable disposition. In
1820-24 he was one of the most active of the Reform itinerants, disseminating their views on his
fields of labor by an effective still hunt, of which the evidence was abundant in Frederick County,
Md., and elsewhere. His brother, Major Alexander Waugh, often attributed his conversion to Reform
to the arguments of Beverly, but, unlike him, once having espoused them he consistently adhered
to them, and lived and died a member of the Methodist Protestant Church in Cumberland, Md.
Beverly silently sunk his opinions and convictions, from what motives others may explain, but the
facts of his subsequent history are that in 1832 he was elected by the General Conference Book
Agent in New York; in 1836 he was elected a Bishop, which position he laboriously filled,
exhibiting conservative views through the controversy of 1844, until he was removed by death in
1858. Not a few of his old Reform friends maintained friendly relations with him. Linked with him
was John Davis, who with Griffith made a notable trio, having shared each other's views favorable
to Reform. He was esteemed a "Prince in Israel," of deep piety and good intellect, he commanded
the suffrages of his brethren, and the confidence of the Bishops, being appointed presiding elder for
a series of years, and elected to every General Conference, save two, after 1816. He died in 1853,
on his farm in Harford County, Md., leaving the testimony: "Happy! happy! peaceful. Tell the
Conference all is peace." Robert R. Roberts was from the ultramontane woods of Pennsylvania;
found his way to the Baltimore Conference; made a deep impression; was sent to Light Street church
immediately after Conference; filled all the prominent stations, and rose to the bishopric as already
found in 1816; lived usefully, and died respected by the whole Church. These are but a moiety of the
class of men nurtured by Methodism and prominent in her councils and work. The obituary rolls of
the minutes for this period remind of other names: Benjamin Jones, Nicholas Watters, John Durbin,
Henry Willis, Edmund Henley, the last, anticipating his death, returned home, erected a stand in the
family graveyard, preached to the neighbors his own funeral sermon, and was soon thereafter
released. Leonard Cassell, of astonishing genius, eloquence, and piety, Joseph Everett, Moses Black,
Samuel Mills, Nathan Weedon, Jesse Pinn, Jacob Rump, Jesse Brown, Leroy Merrett, Joel
Arrington, Nathan Lodge, Zecharia Witten, Ewen Johnson, James Quail, Samuel Waggoner, Peter
Wyatt, William Patridge, Anthony Senter, Henry Padgett, Fletcher Harris, Joseph Stone, Thomas
Lucas, John Wesley Bond, John T. Braine, George Burnett, Charles Dickinson, and Archibald
Robinson, all have a better record on high than this transitory mention.