Undated — The Address of the Virginia Conference to The Members of the British Conference,

The Virginia Conference is answering the British Conference in reference to the request of the General Conference for the services of Bishop Coke. The address indicates that the matter is a General Conference decision. Asbury was coming more and more to feel that Bishop Coke would be lost to America and that another bishop would be necessary.

VIRGINIA CONFERENCE¹

LANE’S CHAPEL²

November 29, 1797

THE ADDRESS OF THE VIRGINIA CONFERENCE TO THE

MEMBERS OF THE BRITISH CONFERENCE,

Respected Fathers and Brethren:

As you, in your brotherly kindness, were pleased to address a letter to us, your brethren and friends in America, expressing your difficulties and desires concerning our beloved brother, Dr. Coke, that he might return to Europe to heal the breach which designing men have been making among you, or to prevent its threatened overflow, we would observe to you, that have but one grand responsive body, which is our General Conference, and it was in and to this body the Doctor entered his obligations to serve his brethren in America. No yearly conference, no official character, dare assume to answer for that grand federal body.

By the advice of the yearly conference now sitting in Virginia, and the respect I bear to you, I write to inform you that in our own persons and order we consent to his return, and partial continuance with you, and earnestly pray that you may have much peace, union, and happiness together. May you find that your divisions end in a greater union, order, and harmony of the body, so that the threatened cloud may blow over, and your divisive party may be of as little consequence to you as ours is to us. With respect to the Doctor’s returning to us, I leave your enlarged understandings, and good sense to judge. You will see the number of souls upon our annual minutes, and as men of reading, you may judge over what a vast continent these societies are scattered. I refer you to a large letter I wrote our beloved brother Bradburn³ on the subject.

By a probable guess, we have, perhaps, from 1,000 to 1,200 traveling and local preachers. Local preachers daily rising up and coming forward with proper recommendations from their respective societies, to receive ordination, besides the regulation and ordinations of the yearly conferences. From Charleston, South Carolina, where the conference was held, to the province of Maine, where another conference is to be held, there is a space of about 1,300 miles; and we have only one worn-out⁴ Superintendent, who was this day advised by the yearly conference to desist from preaching till next spring, on account of his debilitated state of body. But the situation of our affairs requires that he should travel about 5,000 miles a year, through many parts unsettled, and other thinly peopled countries. I have now with me an assistant⁵ who does everything for me he constitutionally can; but the ordaining and stationing the preachers can only be performed by myself in the Doctor’s⁶ absence. We have to lament that our superintendency is so weak, and that it cannot constitutionally be strengthened till the ensuing General Conference. How I have felt and must feel under such critical and important circumstances, I leave you to judge.

To write much on the subject would be imposing on my own weakness, and your good understanding. I speak as unto wise men, judge what I say. Wishing you great peace and spiritual prosperity, I remain your brother, your friend, your servant for Christ’s sake,

FRANCIS ASBURY

Samuel Drew, The Life of the Rev. Thomas Coke, 285-86