Asbury’s letters and related documents · Record 69

Undated — to Thomas Morrell

Signed in the source: Francis Asbury.

ASB_VOL3.PDF, PDF page 148

Of O’Kelly, Bishop Asbury writes to Morrell, after the

adjournment of the General Conference. Asbury states the issues. The Council had preceded the General Conference. It was the advisory body to Asbury. O’Kelly had been a great problem. He left the church and took the disaffected with him in 1792. November [15], 1792

[TO THOMAS MORRELL]¹

I believe now nothing short of being an episcopos was his² first aim. His second was to make the Council independent of the Bishop and General Conference, if they would canonize his writings. This could not be done. His next step was with the authority of a pope to forbid me, by letter, to go a step farther with the Council, after carrying it once around the continent and through the first Council, which ordered me to go round and know the minds of the brethren. His following step was to write against me to Mr. Wesley, who he knew was disaffected to me, because I did not merely force the American Conference to accede to Mr. Wesley’s appointment of Brother Whatcoat, which I did submit to Dr. Coke only for peace with our old father.³ How moved he then to make himself independent of me and the general connection, and dragged in the little Doctor, whom, a little before, he would have banished from the continent. Then he stipulated with me through the Doctor to let him stay in that station,⁴ and consented to leave the decision to a General Conference, and when the decision went against him, went away.

[FRANCIS ASBURY]

John J. Tigert,

A Constitutional History of American Episcopal Methodism, 262

Notes (4)

Pastor at New York. ↩
James O’Kelly. For a discussion of the O’Kellyites’ side of the controversy see MacClenny, The Life of the Rev. James O’Kelly. (See Letters, 419, n. 68.) ↩
Wesley in 1787 had attempted to have Whatcoat elected a superintendent, but the conference refused. In 1800 he was elected to the episcopacy. ↩
O’Kelly had been in the south district of Virginia for about ten years (see Minutes), and it was here that he got his new Republican Methodist Church going. He and his followers took over many churches in southern Virginia and North Carolina. ↩

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