January 24, 1773 — to His Parents
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
ASB_VOL3.PDF, PDF page 30
According to the Journal this letter was written on Monday, January 25. Asbury had been preaching in and around Baltimore. In the letter he begins to show anxiety for his beloved England. He was able to see that the Revolution was brewing. At the time when other preachers were getting ready to go back to England, he was more and more casting his lot with the colonies.
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
January 24, 1773
[TO HIS PARENTS]
Dear Father and Mother:
Grace and peace be with you now and ever! May it be the staff of your old age, and your consolation against the fear of death! These are to let you know I have not forgotten you; and though so many months absent, and so many miles distant, still my love and care are toward you. I often think of you, and many times pray for you. As to my own health of body and mind, I have not been so well I may say for months and years, through mercy. I am now in Maryland, of which you have heard. ‘Tis where they send the English convicts.1 ‘Tis about a hundred miles (that is Baltimore) to the southward of Philadelphia. The people in these parts, some few years back, were buried in sensuality; but God has wrought a wonderful change upon the hearts of many, and many are raised up to speak in his name. Poor Negroes have been deeply affected with the power of God. We have got one that will be fit to send to England soon, to preach. Here are Negroes who have astonished master of families, understanding men, when they have heard them pray; and if they were in England, they would shame their thousands. How many are there, rich and poor, who pretend to believe there is a God, yet never pray to that God, in private nor in public, nor in their families, no more than do their horses. Oh God! in the midst of wrath, remember mercy. Do not pour out thy wrath on these prayerless, Christless mortals.
I am concerned for my country, though I have nothing to gain or lose; but I fear God will contend with them in a way of judgment. As they have been favored with the Gospel, with peace and plenty, these mercies abused, as they have been, call for vengeance. Surely no nation under heaven has been blessed with the Gospel like England. Oh ye inhabitants of England! repent and turn from all your transgressions, so iniquity shall not be your ruin. I fear the storm is gathering, and the cloud will break on my dear countrymen, whose present and eternal interest I have much at heart. I long for the salvation of their souls, that they may be brought home to the fold of Christ. Perhaps some may cast a heedless eye over these lines; and no doubt they will esteem me as a poor ignorant fanatic,—fool as they know I always was,—and therefore all I could say had no weight, and consequently all I can write. But a fool may speak the truth sometimes, and then he should be heard; for truth is truth, come from whom it may. May I hope there are a few of my neighbours who lay eternal things to heart, and do not forsake the assembling of themselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhort one another daily, while it is called to-day, lest any of you should be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. All have need to stand on their watch, and not to think themselves safe till they get into heaven; and blessed is the man that feareth always. There are many rocks to split upon, and many by-paths to lead the soul from God; therefore watch, and remember how I have warned you for the space of three years, and God is my witness I sought nothing but the salvation of your souls. Ye were once the fruit of my labour, as I made your salvation the care and travail of my soul; for though you have ten thousand instructors you have not many fathers. But so it is sometimes, we call our fathers fools, so wise we grow. No doubt our younger sons will call us so. I hope, my dear mother, you rest your soul, your all, into the hand of the Lord; and that you do not sorrow for me as for one without hope. Rejoice with me as one whom the Lord hath blessed in a strange land; as an ambassador for God and Christ. I want for nothing, and if I sought great things I might have them; but these I will not, cannot seek. I dare not take more than what just supplies my need. It shall never be said this was my motive for entering into the ministry. I abhor that Demas spirit. I bless God that for these eight or nine years I have been in (the work as a local and travelling preacher), I have had only plain food and raiment; and I trust I shall never seek more; though I consider sometimes I am here in a strange land, nothing to depend on but the kindness of friends, am spending the best of my days, what shall I do when I am old? But then I am taught to trust in the Lord, and give body and soul to him who has cared for me hitherto, and he will care for me to the end of my life. But if the Lord please I think I shall breathe in my own air in a few years; but I cannot say when, as the call for preachers is great, and I cannot leave the work. But as many are raised up here, and some may come with Mr. Wesley in the spring, I may be spared soon. I desire to live and move in the will of God. ‘Tis strange I have seen but one letter from you now these sixteen or seventeen months I have been in America; and as I am now so far from New York and Philadelphia where the letters come. If they come to the continent ‘tis much, if they are not lost. But if you get mine, it is well, that you may be content. I can trust my parents, my all, into God’s hands. Does my father give his heart to God? Has he victory over sin more than ever? Is his soul devoted to God? It is a trial for us to be parted; but what will it be for us to be eternally parted? Cutting, killing thought! O let us look out for an eternal habitation with God!
We have had exceeding fine weather to the middle of the month. We have had since some severe weather. I have a circuit of about two hundred miles, that I go round in three weeks. If some of our countrymen did but know how well they might live in this country, they would soon come, if they did as the Dutch, sell themselves and children for servants. There are many convicts who have served their time, and have made fortunes afterward. Here are many thousand acres of good land that may be had for clearing, or little more. If a poor man can live any where he may here. Salute all my old friends and neighbours.
Your loving and dutiful son,
F. ASBURY
On envelope
To Mr. Joseph Asbury at Mr. John Worleye’s, Esq., at Hampstead Hall near Birmingham Staffordshire
Drew University Library
The letter from four ladies at Whitchurch, England, written to Mrs. Asbury after Francis left his appointment there to go to America. (See letter, August 27, 1771.)
Various closing phrases and signatures from Asbury’s letters, some of which may not be originals. These show how differently Asbury closed his letters and signed his name.
Notes (1)
- Although the larger part of the English colonists came to America for the purpose of securing religious freedom or to better themselves in the social and economic scale, others were sent because the mother country wished to be rid of them. “The overseas possessions were valued… as supplying an appropriate outlet for the energetic, the dissident, the oppressed, the debtors, the criminals and the failures of old England.’’— G.M. Trevelyan, History of England (Doubleday & Co.), II, 234. “It was men out of work or unfit for it who chose to go to America; and not men of the countryside so much as discredited idlers and would-be adventurers of the towns.”—Woodrow Wilson, A History of the American People (Harper & Bros.), I, 45. “If a good many (though not many in comparison with the total) of the immigrants in the first century were taken from English jails, it does not mean that they were criminals. They had been jailed mostly for debt, vagrancy, or trifling thefts, at that time cruelly punished.”— James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America, 49. “Decidedly less welcome were the murderers and other really vicious characters whom the English authorities insisted on dumping in the colonies, particularly in Maryland and Virginia. Frequent colonial protests were raised against the practice, but it was never completely abandoned throughout the colonial period.”—Nelson Manfred Drake, A Short History of American Life (McGraw-Hill Book Co.), 9. “Some writers have estimated the number of convicted criminals sent to the colonies by the British Government at from ten thousand to twenty-five thousand, most of them being sent to Maryland and the middle colonies. See Scharf, ‘History of Maryland,’ Vol. 1, p. 371.”—Footnote from James Wilford Garner and Henry Cabot Lodge, History of Nations, “United States” (P.F. Collier & Son, Corp.), XXIII, 130. (Russell Q. Chilcote.) ↩