Friday, June 26, 1801 — to Thomas Haskins
ASB_VOL3.PDF, PDF page 265
Thomas Haskins was for a long time the treasurer of St. George’s Church, one of its trustees, and a former traveling preacher. He seems to have been closer to Asbury than any other member, and Asbury got him to do the work on his Journal. However, Haskins did not do it too well. (See Journal, April 5, 1802.) Asbury was doing everything possible to prevent a division of St. George’s. Without doubt Haskins and Cooper were at odds.
PHILADELPHIA, PA.1
Friday, June 26, 1801
[TO THOMAS HASKINS]2
My very dear Son:
If you can be so accommodating as to transcribe two volumes3 of my journal by construction and correction upon your plan already begun, as soon as possible, I will promise you $100. If you will likewise copy and construct in the best manner you can some fragments of letters4 I am selecting from a correspondence of near thirty years from a great variety of persons from different parts of the continent. You must be at liberty to have some parts you may judge uninteresting but these fragments of letters contain relations of revivals in most places in the union. I wish if you undertake this work it might be with all your might at least within the space of six or ten months.
I beg leave to suggest to you as there is, I understand a meeting5 to be held at Col. North’s this evening, if it would not be better to suspend all thoughts of withdrawing from the church, at least for six or twelve months, and all return to your stations and fellowship in the church. You will ask me how much nearer shall we be then and that I cannot answer. It may be no object with some of you by that time. You will ask me what further advice would you give and I answer your difficulty ought not to be with the conference or with me or the present stationed preachers or with the society in general. These you judge innocent as a body or with the official members except those that form the last quarter meeting. Then only will you leave these sheep that have not injured you. I hope you will not avail yourself of my advice to my injury but to your advantage. Suppose you have a resolution entered into and a committee select a member of the agrieved body to be appointed to address all the members of that quarter meeting individually or collectively by word or letter; to give them the fullest information they can of what was done and why things were so done at that quarter meeting; and never give over and address them, time after time, because it is a subject that so many feel themselves invested into such an amount of members that perhaps they will in the final issue of things, they will have the church, unless said select men can obtain such satisfaction as will calm the minds of the body of the dissatisfied members. Assume great tenderness and yet great plainness, move slow, make an address, copy it, send it to everyone. Let them answer you collectively or individually. Tell them they must not view it as a light matter but strive as they love your souls as the final due (worth) them. There should not only be caution, how they take up and decide upon such a matter and most earnestly entreat their candid information upon the present matter and the select committee will report to the body. I wish it not to be made public that I have anything to do in the matter of advice. I confide in you and I know not that I could write to the body or any other person but yourself. You will easily, you will understand and systematize this plan in a few words.
You must consider whether you keep your places in the church and with which property you can demand that satisfaction, and how improper, if not impossible, it might be for you to obtain it if withdrawn. If you apply to the court, by all means stay in the county. You can know perfectly the members of that court or quarterly meeting and employ men to follow them with letter after letter in the greatest calmness and love by ample legation of the great breach it is like to make if full information is not obtained. I have offered you a sum, I hope, to command for your transcript of the Journal and letters, I shall not depend upon the connection. We have already given a $100 for the first copy6 you now have. I shall be exceedingly gratified for you to proceed. It is not what it is worth but what I can spare.
Thine as ever,
F. ASBURY
The Historical Society of the Philadelphia Conference
and Old St. George’s Methodist Church, Philadelphia
Notes (6)
- There was no Journal record for this period as Asbury was laid up in Philadelphia with a bad foot. (See Journal, 1852 ed., May 31, 1801.) ↩
- Grocer and local preacher. ↩
- On July 27 Asbury says that he was reading his papers for a second volume of his Journal. (See Journal.) This letter shows that he turned over to Haskins work that had already been done by another to whom he had paid a hundred dollars. ↩
- A set of these “Letters to Asbury” was published in 1805. There are only about a dozen of these that are dated before this letter. A copy of the printed letters is in the library of Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina. ↩
- Asbury has a definite purpose in this letter. He must have had it delivered to Haskins by messenger as he is giving advice for the meeting to be held that night at Colonel North’s. North was one of the trustees of the church. ↩
- Not known to whom he paid it. Work had already been done by Dickins and Cooper. ↩