[December —, 1792] — to Jesse Nicholson

A Letter of James O’Kelly to Jesse Nicholson

There are two letters from James O’Kelly, one to Jesse Nicholson and the other to Colonel Williams, which are printed by Bennett in his Memorials of Methodism in Virginia. Both give a defense of O’Kelly’s reasons for leaving the church.

[December —, 1792]¹

[TO JESSE NICHOLSON]²

Dear Brother Nicholson, Local Preacher:

O, my brother! Alas! my brother. I beseech God to grant you a share in every blessing of the everlasting covenant. O, brother, the heart knows its own bitterness. I am too often giving way to the overflowings of a full heart. O, the heart-breaking thoughts!—the Methodist preachers who stood together like regular soldiers, are now afraid of each other, as you told me last evening you feared me. Fearful prelude to a universal decline, or a fearful separation! Find out the cause; search for the Achan. One there is in our camps; and if the lot justly falls on me, cast me away, and there will be a calm. But be sure, before God, to give me justice. I am not given to change. A Methodist I am, and how can I change. The elders to the North, not knowing what to accuse me of, make me their table laugh, still I am loth to go away.

What have I done? Overturned government? What? the Council—not Methodism. I only say no man among us ought to get into the Apostle’s chair with the Keys, and stretch a lordly power over the ministers and Kingdom of Christ. ‘Tis a human invention, a quicksand; and when my grey hairs may be preserved under ground, I may be remembered. We ought to respect the body before any mere man. A consolidated government is always bad. We have published that we believe a General Conference to be injurious to the Church. District Conferences have lost their suffrages; men of wit will leave the travelling connection. Boys with their Keys, under the absolute sway of one who declares his authority and succession from the Apostles—these striplings must rule and govern Christ’s Church, as master workmen; as though they could finish such a temple. People are to depend on their credibility. These things are so; I know what I say; I am able when called upon to answer it. I am a friend to Christ; to his Church, but not to prelatick government. If you will carefully read the Bishop’s address to me and others of the preachers who oppose the late proceedings, there you will find the heresy reflections—and the very manner of the new constitution; but, unless you look over and over it, ‘tis hard to understand. My dear brother, farewell; reject me, all of you, and let me feel the sneers, the frowns of strangers. My days are few among you; when the members reject me I drop my journeyings.

I am, &c.,

JAMES O’KELLY

W.W. Bennett, Memorials of Methodism in Virginia, 323-25