August 15, 1788 — to Jasper Winscom
BATH, VIRGINIA
ASB_VOL3.PDF, PDF page 84
Jasper Winscom, a shopkeeper, later a preacher of Winchester, England, was an old friend of Asbury. They had known each other when Asbury was pastor on the Wiltshire Circuit. Evidently he had had some connection with Robert Williams’ book business which had become a matter of trouble to Asbury and Wesley. Asbury makes an appropriate reference to Wesley by calling him “dear old Daddy.” There had been a disagreement between Wesley and Asbury over some engagements for Thomas Coke. Other
differences are discussed. A reference to Thomas Rankin is another interesting feature.
BATH, VIRGINIA1
August 15, 1788
[TO JASPER WINSCOM]2
My dear Winscom:
I take it kind in you to send me a letter, for perhaps I have been tardy through a multiplicity of persons and things. I beg you will not fail to send me a letter once a year and inform me of all my old friends:—Is Mr. Lacy3 dead, and Mr. Marsh?4 I expect to realize what property I expect to get hold of, that was formerly the claim of Robert Williams;5 in the space of a year, it will be about 100 pounds: an hundred and fifty is sunk by his last marriage, the family being insolvent. Shall I put the sum to interest and send it every year? It will come to something in an age. What I have procured are the copies of “Saints Rests and Patterns” I have collected, and bound, and sold; these should have been the profits of the society or mine for trouble and care. What he had in hand, and some debts that were commanded, his wife and step-children have secured and now they have nothing.6 Mr. Rankin took home books to pay Greenwood’s debt. I shall be obliged to you to give these matters a serious turn in your mind and write me what you think is best to be done.
Our borders are enlarging daily, multitudes of souls converted to God in a sudden powerful manner. I expect not less than ten thousand will be added to the church in about these fifteen months last past. Nine states out of thirteen begin to flame with the glory of God. I begin to feel as I felt when first sent out to preach the Gospel, and expect to see souls converted to God every meeting, and to feel light and life and love.
My circuit is large, about 1000 miles from north to south and 6 to 700 from east to west.
I am a bishop and a beggar, our connection is very poor, and our preachers on the frontiers labour the whole year for 6 to 8 pounds. I have opened an house7 for the education of youth that will require 4000 pounds to complete it, and this burden lies chiefly on me: so that I can hardly command the one coat on my yearly allowance. I find it hard work to do a little for my dear old friends. I have health and labour, as I visit the extremities of my charge, and to where danger threatens; from one grand division of the work to the other. We find it highly needful to hold 10 or a dozen conferences directed by presiding elders where I attend; by this means our preachers can all meet in conference and all be within two days ride of the place. The arrangement of these conferences as to time and place to be fitted to the Doctor’s8 movings was the only cause of the swelling of old Daddy9 and me. I have been prevented from visiting some circuits that have been formed 3 or 4 years that have wanted my pastoral care: and as we are now fitted to meet the Doctor’s coming I can only see these once in two years, whereas if I was wholly at my own disposal I should see them all in the space of 12 or 15 months. You think liberally that “punctilios ought to be dispensed with” and perhaps if you were standing as I do you would see it more so.
There is not a man in the world so obnoxious to the American politicians as our dear old Daddy, but no matter, we must treat him with all the respect we can and that is due to him.
The famous Duche,10 the Oracle of Philadelphia, native of the City, Rector of Christ Church, and who would have been the Bishop of Pennsylvania, was unhappily taken in the British lines during the last war, and wrote through fear, a letter unfriendly to the interests of America. He was sent into banishment, never! never! to return. Poor man, he was fixing up to return, but no! his dearest friends had to inform him it would not do for him to return. We may form a friendly treaty with England, and new model our government to look more like monarchy and aristocracy. Still there will be a jealousy. I write you as my confidential friend: my real sentiments are union but no subordination, connexion but no subjection. I am sure that no man or number of men in England can direct either the head or the body here unless he or they should possess divine powers, be omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. That one thousand preachers traveling and local; and thirty thousand people would submit to a man they never have nor can see, his advice they will follow as far as they judge it right. For our old, old Daddy to appoint conferences when and where he was pleased, to appoint a joint superintendent with me, were strokes of power we did not understand. He told me he would not ask the preachers’ consent as to whom he should appoint. What security was left for them, whether he should be a wise man or a fool, a good or a bad man? Who was to remove him but he that appointed him?
I hope we shall live in peace, but you may be sure I have had it on all sides and I believe Diotrephes11 has got the ear of old Daddy too. He sometimes prates against me with malicious words because I was bold to stay when he like a coward ran away, not only through fear, but hope of gaining preferment in the church or state.
I know also there are very few of you English men but what have a great deal of national pride. I know how you all feel, for I have felt the same. But we must bear one with another. When a Continental Captain and other great men informed me Mr. Wesley had written so and so, I told them I wished he had not so written, and I knew not that he had written such books, but be that matter as it would brother Wesley was in England and I was in America. He thought it his duty to support that, and I my duty to support this Government, and altho’ I had respected his religious creed, I did not think myself obliged to adopt his political creed. I found such sentiments as these were satisfactory to the judicious and candid. But oh, I want to live in love and peace with all mankind and seek and save all the souls I can. We have a number of Captains and Colonels and men that are deep in the policy of their country and they will examine the policy of our CHURCH, to see if it is sound. We enjoy real liberty here, no denomination hath any pre-eminence over another, and I hope never will have. I wish we may all stand on equal ground. Now my dear friend be more than ever engaged with God for your own soul, and the souls of others. If you print your book do send me one.12
I am as ever thine,
FRANCIS ASBURY
Methodist Mission House, Marylebone Road, London.
Transcribed by Frank Baker
Notes (12)
- Now Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. ↩
- Jasper Winscom was a shopkeeper of Winchester, who, influenced by Wesley’s writings, formed a Methodist group in that cathedral city. He became a local preacher. Thomas Webb preached in his home and was the means of converting Winscom’s thirteen-year-old daughter. At the conference of 1788 Wesley accepted him as a full-time itinerant, family man though he was. Shortly after Wesley’s death, however, he was snubbed for “meddling with things that belong only to the Assistant,” and retired from the itinerant ministry. Asbury had been associated with Winscom while he was stationed in the Wiltshire South Circuit. (Frank Baker.) ↩
- Probably Mr. Lacy of Salisbury, and later of Bath, whose son, Jeremiah, after fighting in the War of American Independence, became a Methodist preacher. (See “Memoirs of the Life of Jeremiah Lacy,” The Methodist Magazine, 1802, 443-49, 487-92, 531-36.) (Frank Baker.) ↩
- Mr. Marsh appears in John Furz’s account of the early days of Methodism in Salisbury, which were overshadowed by the infidelity of Wesley’s brother-in-law, the Rev. Westley Hall. After the scandal had died down, Furz preached in Hall’s chapel and described how “Mr. Marsh then took part of the house adjoining to it, for me to live in, and to receive any of Mr. Wesley’s preachers that could find time to call.” (See The Arminian Magazine, 1782, 632.) (Frank Baker.) ↩
- Robert Williams came to America from England as a local preacher in 1769, paying his own expenses, shortly before the first itinerant preachers, Boardman and Pilmoor, were sent out by the English Conference. He spent most of his time as the “Apostle of Virginia.” He published some of Wesley’s writings, until the first conference in 1773 resolved that no preacher should do this without the approval of both Wesley and the American preachers. (See Note 22, letter, September 3, 1780.) John Wesley wrote to Thomas Rankin on December 4, 1773: “I have written to Robert Williams and given him leave to print the Notes on my account; nothing on his own. I never knew he did till afterward.” Shortly after this Williams married and located somewhere between Portsmouth and Suffolk, Virginia. Asbury’s phrase about his “last marriage” seems to hint a previous marriage. Williams evidently married a widow with children. On September 26, 1775, he died; and Asbury preached his funeral sermon. Long after his death his publishing activities were still causing difficulty, as is shown by this letter. Williams’ reprints of Wesley’s editions of Baxter’s Saints’ Everlasting Rest and Thomas à Kempis’ Christian’s Pattern, or, A Treatise of the Imitation of Christ were still lying about in loose sheets, and Asbury had them bound for sale. But it was difficult to decide whether they should be regarded as the property of the family or of the conference— or even of Asbury himself. The affair was not too important. Williams was the father of Methodism in Virginia and a great pioneer preacher. (Frank Baker.) ↩
- Thomas Rankin also had had dealings with Williams’ publications. He returned to England in 1778 and “took home some books to pay Greenwood’s debt.” Williams had galloped from Castlebar to Dublin on hearing that Ashton was on the point of emigrating to America, sold his horse to pay his debts, and depended on Ashton’s generosity for his passage. It seems likely that in his haste some of his debts were overlooked, of which Rankin heard and took the best method he could think of to put the matter right. (Frank Baker.) ↩
- Cokesbury College. ↩
- Thomas Coke. ↩
- John Wesley was now eighty-five years old. That this was really quite an affectionate nickname is seen more clearly in Asbury’s reference a little later when he speaks of “our dear old Daddy.” (Frank Baker.) ↩
- Jacob Duche was born in Philadelphia in 1737. He graduated from the college of Philadelphia and studied at Cambridge University. He was given license by the Bishop of London to preach in America. He became rector of Christ Church. He opened the first session of Congress with prayer on September 7, 1774. For three years he was chaplain. It was at this time that he wrote a letter to Washington urging him to capitulate to the Redcoats. George Washington laid the letter before Congress, and Congress declared Duche a traitor. He fled to England, where he was chaplain in an orphanage and wrote some books. He married a sister of Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. (Jacob S. Payton.) ↩
- For Diotrephes, one seeking pre-eminence in the church, see III John 9, 10. Diotrephes is evidently Thomas Rankin. According to Rankin’s autobiography Wesley was dissatisfied with the leadership of American Methodism and therefore “determined to appoint me superintendent of the whole.” This was in 1772. Until the conference of 1773 Asbury’s name was placed above those of Richard Boardman and Joseph Pilmoor. On Rankin’s arrival Asbury had to take second place once more, and to be subject to strict discipline, against which he rebelled, even from a man nine years his senior. Rankin seemed determined to act the part of a new broom sweeping clean, and the clash of strong wills led to frequent friction in which each felt the other was to blame. Soon after the outbreak of the war, Rankin announced his view that it would be best for them to return to England, but was apparently shamed into staying by Asbury’s vehement objections. (See Asbury’s Journal of August 7, 1775.) Eventually (1778) Rankin did go, stealing away without a farewell. Asbury looked upon this as rank desertion, and Rankin’s silence in his autobiography about his departure suggests that he himself looked upon it as an inglorious retreat. (For Rankin’s autobiography see Thomas Jackson, ed., Lives of Early Methodist Preachers, 4th ed., 1872, V, 135-217. Cf. W.C. Barclay, Early American Methodism, I, 39-43. For a lengthier summary by Asbury of his thorn in the flesh, see his letter of January 15, 1816. See Asbury’s letter to Joseph Benson, January 15, 1816.) (Frank Baker.) ↩
- Winscom’s book does not appear to have been published. (Frank Baker.) ↩