July 24, 1803 — to Ezekiel Cooper
SOUNDERSBURG, PA.
ASB_VOL3.PDF, PDF page 334
Preceding letters have referred repeatedly to the division in the church in Philadelphia. It is clear that Ezekiel Cooper had been tied in with one of the factions. Asbury had been pointed with him in trying to heal the division. Now Asbury has come to the end of his patience; and following a vote of the conference, Asbury is asking him to move to Baltimore.
SOUNDERSBURG, PA.
July 24, 1803
[TO EZEKIEL COOPER]1
My dear Brother:
As the Executive of the Conference, and your friend, I think it my duty to tell you that I think it your duty, in obedience to the Conference, to move to Baltimore2 about the first of October. You know there have been many changes among your brethren. I hope that you also will bear your part. It is my wish, if I cannot keep the people out of contention, to save the preachers. As to any reports that are false and groundless, you can easily combat them in Baltimore as well as in Philadelphia, by word or letter.
I think of any preacher that has been stationed in Philadelphia for six or seven years, I would conclude it was time for him to be removed if he was not local, and altogether out of my power. I wish every person that can be moved to be moved, and everything that can be done for peace and union to be done.
You are not ignorant that other preachers have been called suspended, and some removed at a word, to serve the wishes of some dissatisfied minds. You will take your turn with others, and as there was such unanimity in the vote of the Conference, it ought to have weight with you. As an individual your going or staying is nothing to me. I have no spleen against you. I only want peace in the societies, by any good means. I wonder why you should wish to stay where you must have had great distress of mind, and I have thought it may be the cause of your ill health.
I am most sincerely, your friend,
F. ASBURY
Garrett Biblical Institute Library
Notes (2)
- Book Agent. ↩
- In Phoebus, Beams of Light on Early Methodism in America, 280-81, are listed Cooper’s objections to going to Baltimore. There are nine of these. Interestingly, he did not go to Baltimore. One of the points he made was that the General Conference had fixed the Book Concern in Philadelphia and that the Philadelphia Conference had no power to remove it. The General Conference of 1804 decided that the Book Concern should be located in New York. Ezekiel Cooper was re-elected as Book Agent, and John Wilson was elected Assistant Book Agent. Cooper was stationed 1805-6 in Brooklyn and in 1807-8 in New York. In 1809 he resumed his itinerant labors and was assigned to Delaware. Eight years later he located. He spent the next eight years in this relation on the supernumerary list in the Philadelphia Conference. During the latter part of his life he resided in Philadelphia. He died at eighty-four years of age in the sixty-second year of his ministry. (See Stevens, History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Vol. III.) ↩