May 7, 1806 — to Thomas Coke
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
ASB_VOL3.PDF, PDF page 431
The notes prepared by Frank Baker make this letter one of the most interesting in the collection. The relations of Coke and Asbury have been the subject of much discussion and some
controversy.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
May 7, 1806
[TO THOMAS COKE]
My very dear Brother Coke:
Grace grace attend thee, and thine, and the ministers of Christ and people of God in every land. Having passed my three score years, I feel the happiness of seeing each other again, can we ever forget the days and nights we have sweetly spent together; spirits sweetly joined, and not a jar;1 unless Diotrephes’s2 here, or there, formed for discord, whisper’d evilly. Ah my brother the deep rivers, creeks, swamps, and deserts we have travelled together, and glad to find a light to hear the voice of human, or domestick creature; the mountain rains, and chilling colds or burning heats, to say nothing of the perils of the deep. How oft you have stemmed the flood, the vast Atlantic with Columbian courage. Only be thou faithfull unto death and Jesus will give thee the crown of life, Life eternal Life! After riding chiefly upon horseback till the last summer, I have bought a very light stage waggon, by this mode I can visit the seven conferences with most of the cities and towns in the year. I have a young man3 to drive, write, and preach, every night, when I preach in the day, unless when we are upon our flights, 40, 50, or more miles in the day. In 5 of the 7 conferences we have an increase of members 8273, preachers 58, but as judgment is begun at the house of God we mean to have no cyfers [zeros] in our connection; I do not calculate upon an increase of above 25 or 30 preachers.
As to the work of God it is greater than ever, and will be universal, it is growing general. In the 5 conferences past, we must calculate upon 500 subjects of restoring, converting, and sanctifying grace at the times of sitting: harmony, zeal, and order, animates the whole campmeetings.4 Oh Glory, O Glorious! In Delaware the millennium is certainly begun. They can live without slavery, or liquid fire, the presiding elder has planned 100 nights and days to be in the woods. This work is now prevailing from Oconee, to Kennebeck River.5 In my last route from Baltimore to Baltimore, 4000 miles in 8 months, I visited and revisited in part Delaware, Pennsylvania, Jersey, York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, indeed I did touch the State of Vermont.
You will not expect to hear from me but once in a year. I shall change my mode and go north west, and not return through the cities. I shall go like the scape goat into the wilderness, and rest from this tempest of trouble with the conferences; from June to September. If you wish to have any thing for your magazine from America, chaste and purified, I would advise you to print from our Annual Letter Book. I would advise you to commit the care of your books to Cooper and Wilson.6 I go like the mail stage in all parts of the continent.
What God will do with the old I can not say but I think the new world will be converted by 1000 in a year. And yet I must say American sinners, are the greatest sinners upon earth, they sin against such mercy, blessings, and privileges. We are young in age; but old as a people, growing in pride and fulness of bread; but when I think, we hope, ours and others, form 5000 Gospel ministers, men, we hope, that feel the truth; and preach it, and when I hope for the prayers of many, ten thousands of people, I say surely God will work. I must not forget [to] inform you that the Western Conference has not been unmindful of the region beyond, far south west to Louisiana, and the Territories on the Mississippi. We have six missionaries that have gone six, eight, or nine hundred miles through the wilderness of savage tribes to the lost sheep of the house of America, the poor Christian savages. More of this you will see in our missionaries’ own letters in the Annual Letter Book preparing for the press.
My dear friend you are a witness to my poverty for more than twenty years or I had done more for you, but I have attended you by night and day, have fitted your horse, held your bridle and stirrup, lent you [my] own horse, and with all the attention of a servant and often in a dark night called out, where is the Doctor, nor I alone, but all my brethren. You have never had more undissembled friendship shown to you than in America. I have a receipt from George Suckley7 for 45 pounds thirteen and six pence sterling. This you will receive of Mr. Holley and pay to Mr. Rankin.8 When I am able I will make up the one hundred sterling. As ever thine F. ASBURY
P.S. Since I began this letter I have received yours London, January 1, 1806. We have progressed in our campmeeting 4 days about 20 miles north east of New York. Oh what a time we have had, in uninterrupted work of God night and day. Never was an army in the time of war under greater discipline, men upon guard night and day, near 100 travelling, and local preachers; and possibly 3000 people; souls convicted, converted, sanctified night and day. Several praying societies at the tents; and, on the circle, should I guess I should say one if not 200 souls under operations of great preachers; my self, came and [gone?] thousand [year]; near two from Charleston; others from one hundred to fifty rich and poor many tents, markees, coaches, wagons, chairs. Monday the fourth day victory! victory declared upon our side, preaching at 10, 2 o’clock, 7, midnight, and cock crowing. Oh, the power of overwhelming power! upon the preachers, the members, the people of the world. We felt God was so great in the praying exercises we could not call off the people to preaching, seeing that the preachers like the priest at the dedication could not stand before the Lord, weeping, weeping on all sides. You will excuse me when I tell you I have not slept an hour in bed.
You will find me with a letter… Oh my Brother it is matter of joy that so much of life is past with me, that I am not dead, nor damned, backslidden, as some have shamefully done. I have heard of but one preacher dead this year, Brother Iliff,9 that died immediately after the sitting of the Philadelphia Conference last year. When I think I am in the sixty first year of my life, 44 of my publick labours, the 40th year of my slight travelling; and have been so much exposed to good and bad preachers, and people; I feel humbled for any imprudence; forgive me my friend, if I have ever grieved or offended you, for if I have, it was unwillingly. If I knew how to address Mrs. Coke10 I would do it, but St. Paul has done it, and told us what the wife of a deacon, and bishop ought to be. I am to you both one of your best and faithful affectionate friends
F. ASBURY
Photostat at Methodist Mission House, London.
Transcribed by Frank Baker
Notes (10)
- The relations of Asbury and Coke have drawn much speculation. It was so in their own day. In spite of the inevitable variances of opinion between two such great leaders, there was undoubtedly a bond of warm affection between them. On January 6, 1806, Coke addressed a letter to the New York Conference vindicating himself from their suspicions of him, but reiterating his conviction that it would be wasted effort for him to come to America “as a mere preacher,” but only if he could help them by exercising episcopal functions, as he had originally been asked to do. (See Duren’s Asbury, 256-64.) In March the Baltimore Conference drafted a reply, which was to be presented to the other conferences. Asbury’s Journal admits that it was written “in a manner that will not please him.” The answers of the various conferences told Coke in effect, “You need not trouble to come back.” In this personal letter Asbury tries to soften the blow with expressions of personal affection, even though he himself seems to have been at least partly in accord with the decisions not to ask Coke to honor his promise to settle in America for good. Bitter tongues had been wagging in England also, and Coke was the more anxious to advertise the fact of Asbury’s friendship. On receiving this letter, therefore, he sent it on to Joseph Benson, who had been appointed Connexional Editor to the English Conference in 1805, endorsed with a plea that he should insert this avowal of friendship in The Methodist Magazine: To Mr. Benson Very dear Friend, I shall take it as a peculiar favour, if you will print every thing Mr. Asbury says in this letter concerning me, except what he observes about my commentary; as I wish that the Methodists in Europe may have a testimony, that Mr. Asbury & I did always labour together in love. Do oblige me in this. I intend to send you some more letters from Bristol in a very few days. My dear wife unites with me in love to you and Mrs. Benson, Miss Benson & all the family. I am, my dear Sir, Your affectionate & faithful Friend T. Coke. Benson obliged in part. About half the letter, paraphrased as usual, was included in the November issue of the magazine. Of Asbury’s professions of love, however, only the opening sentences and closing salutation are included. (Frank Baker.) ↩
- Thomas Rankin. (See letter of August 15, 1788.) ↩
- Joseph Crawford. ↩
- Benson, in printing this letter in The Methodist Magazine, omits reference to camp meetings, making the letter read as if the revivals are simply at the conferences. The lengthy and emotional description of camp meetings in the second part of the letter is similarly omitted. The reason is not far to seek. English Methodist leaders were afraid of the emotional excesses that might accompany such gatherings in England about which Lorenzo Dow had enthused in visiting the British Isles. The 1807 British Conference gave its official ruling on the matter thus: “It is our judgment, that, even supposing such meetings to be allowable in America, they are highly improper in England, and likely to be productive of considerable mischief. And we disclaim all connexion with them.” It was the breaking of this ban that brought about the formation of the largest cleavage in British Methodism by the formation of the Primitive Methodist Connexion. (Frank Baker.) ↩
- Georgia to Maine. ↩
- Ezekiel Cooper and John Wilson, Book Agents. ↩
- George Suckley was a New York merchant of forty who had apparently come over to the United States with Coke, having received his first “class ticket” from John Wesley himself. (See J.B. Wakeley’s, Lost Chapters Recovered from the Early History of American Methodism, 562-63.) ↩
- Thomas Rankin. ↩
- Benjamin Iliff, native of Buck County, Pennsylvania. (See Minutes, 1806.) ↩
- On April 1, 1805, Coke had married Penelope Goulding Smith, the only surviving child of “an eminent Attorney” of Bradford-on-Avon. She also was included in Coke’s offer of himself without reserve to America. Although fifteen years younger than Coke, she died before him, greatly lamented. (Frank Baker.) ↩