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Asbury’s letters and related documents · Record 43

[January 12, 1790] — to James O’kelly

Signed in the source: Francis Asbury.

ASB_VOL3.PDF, PDF page 107

Notes (3)
  1. Date is that of the Journal, January 12, 1790. James O’Kelly was presiding elder in Virginia. (Journal, 1852.) ↩
  2. O’Kelly had written Asbury, “Brother you know our infant state, grant us one year to consider the matters coming before us. Or if you refuse this, take away your negative —and if you refuse ‘I shall as a duty I owe to the Church use mine influence,’ etc.” This is all of the letter quoted. Then O’Kelly is quoted as saying, “Francis received my letter by the hand of the messenger, but he utterly refused to comply with my request. He answered me after this manner, ‘Thy letter greatly alarmed me.…’” (See above. Drinkhouse, History of Methodist Reform and Methodist Protestant Church, I, 371.) The negative referred to here is the power Asbury attained in the Council to negate what was done by the Council. There is reference to another letter to O’Kelly in Asbury’s Journal, September 25, 1790. “To conciliate the minds of our brethren in the south district of Virginia, who are restless about the council, I wrote their leader a letter, informing him, ‘that I would take my seat in council as another member’; and, in that point, at least, waive the claims of episcopacy, yea, I would lie down and be trodden upon, rather than knowingly injure one soul.” O’Kelly was the presiding elder on the South District. ↩
  3. See appended excerpts from letters from Jarratt to the Rev. John Coleman. The following excerpts throw light on Jarratt’s attitude toward Asbury and Coke. April 15, 1790 (Excerpt 1) Great strifes and contentions have pervaded the societies, about liberation. I know not how they will terminate. I don’t concern about them. Father O’Kelly has lately published an essay on the subject. It is, no doubt, a well meant effort; but is a jumbled spot of work—though it may not be the less efficacious on that account. Perhaps you have seen the essay, as it was published in the north. His glosses on Scripture are very inaccurate: indeed he seems to have so little understanding of Scripture, that he darkens rather than illustrates those passages he has undertaken to explain. However, he is a good man, and valiant for what he judges to be the truth.… You must have seen the Arminian Magazine, published by Dr. Coke and Mr. Asbury.… I admire Mr. Wesley’s original sermons, printed in that magazine. The diction, &c. shew a strength of genius not to be impaired by the wastes of time. They betray nothing of second childhood, except the larding them with so much Latinity, may appear to savour of it. I was pleased and edified by Mr. Asbury’s Journal. I saw so much of what he seemed to be, when he used to visit me, that I found my affections towards him very strong. Dr. Coke’s Journal is very far from being equal to his; nay I think his narrations, for the most part, very trifling and not worth reading. He does not discover the man of judgment at all, in that performance. I think it was very weak and imprudent in him, to give such extraordinary characters of, and bestow such high encomiums upon some of the preachers and others, who are yet living, and who may be too much tickled and elated thereby—I don’t suppose them to be out of the power of temptations of that sort.… Mr. Petegrew, who, next to myself, had befriended the Methodists more than any other clergyman in America, is compared to a little chicken, &c. &c. Are not such things too trifling for a D.D. or LL.D. or even for a B.A. If you have read this magazine, as I expect you have, you must have observed the gibbet he has made of my name: and I suppose he intended that it should be gibbeted in secula seculorum. But, you know me better, than to suppose any thing the little creature could say of me, could move me much.… For if there be not five falsities or misrepresentations, in the five lines, written, respecting me, in page 342, I am, as Falstaff says, a shotten herring. I will point them out to you, and I know you can believe me. After saying he met me at Roanoke [Chapel] he says, first, “That I went with him eight miles.” I did not go one step with him. Second, “We talked largely about the minutes on slavery.” The whole conversation, on that subject, would not have taken up three minutes time. Third, he says, “I would not be persuaded.” I don’t know that he used one word to persuade me. Fourth, The secret is, says he, that I have twenty-four slaves. God knows me better, and so do you. Fifth, He intimates that I mightily oppose their rules. Every one that knows me, knows this to be so far from the truth, that it was quite the reverse. When I parted from the doctor at that time, I did not mistrust I had offended him, and expected he would have called on me when he came near my house. Instead of this, he passed by along the road over the bridge, without vouchsafing to call, and make this Journal upon it, page 392: “I passed by the house of Mr. Jarratt a violent assertor of the justice and propriety of Negro slavery.” Did you ever discover me to be such a violent man, as to authorise any one to make violence a distinguishing characteristic of me? The truth is, the little man read the minutes to me, and asked my opinion of them. I told him I was no friend of slavery; but however I did not think the minutes proper, for two reasons. First, The disturbance it would make and the opposition it would meet with in the societies. Second, He ought not to make a disputable matter a positive term of communion. And as he was a stranger in the land, I told him the spirit, of Virginia would not brook force, and probably I gave him some advice on the matter which I suppose the bishop looked upon as an insult—but I did it in the integrity of my heart, without any suspicion it would offend the gentleman so highly.… I am your sincere friend, Devereux Jarratt August 31, 1790 (Excerpt 2) Dr. Coke’s Journal, I hope to treat with becoming contempt. But should I light on him in a proper place I might try to convict him of sin, or else furnish him with matter for a new Journal. His little soul, I believe, was exasperated at me, for laughing at his episcopal credentials, which he vainly drew out upon me, with Mr. Wesley’s hand and seal annexed forsooth. The sight to me was truely farcical and ludicrous in the extreme —I could not forbear smiling—But my pleasantry, on viewing the parchment, was too serious a matter for the doctor; his pride could not brook it—and so he has shewn his spleen by holding me up in his journal. He intended it, no doubt, for a gibbet— and I expect he would have done as much hurt to my body as he intended to my reputation, could it have been done as easily; I mean by publishing Falsities. I freely forgive him, and I pray to God to forgive him, and cause him to know himself. I remain, your Friend and Brother, D. Jarratt The Life of the Reverend Devereux Jarratt, 81-84 ↩

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