[ —— 1811] — to Stith Mead?
ASB_VOL3.PDF, PDF page 572
This is an excerpt of one of several letters which Bennett included in his Memorials of Methodism in Virginia. Bennett does not tell to whom they were written, nor where he got them but probably the Stith Mead collection. Asbury is evidently well along in years. He mentions the forty years. If the reference is to his American ministry, then the letter was written in 1811. At times he refers to the beginning of his ministry in England. However, he usually refers to the beginning in America. He began that ministry in 1771.
[ —— 1811]1
[TO STITH MEAD?]2
May the great Head of the church prepare us all to preach all the gospel doctrines in their order; to saints, sinners, backsliders, legalists, deists, and hypocrites. Alas! what little have I done, what little have I suffered! Me, who am less than the least of all saints, not worthy to be called a preacher, much less a Bishop, and an apostolic successor. I want to live to make the best of a poor day’s work. The longer I run, now forty years, the further I am behind. Never had we such scaffolding for the work of God; far beyond all former appearances or calculations. But above all, Oh the souls already gone to glory!
[FRANCIS ASBURY]3
William W. Bennett, Memorials of Methodism, 618
Notes (3)
- Bennett puts this letter in with the last letters of Asbury. However, it seems to have been written in 1811. ↩
- The letter was evidently written to a preacher, and Asbury is making an appeal to preach the gospel. Bennett had letters which had been written to Stith Mead, a collection which with Mead’s Journal was lost in the Richmond fire of the Civil War. Mead was on the Buckingham Circuit, Virginia, in 1811. ↩
- The letter was unsigned. ↩