February 8, 1815 — to the Society at Norfolk, Virginia
ASB_VOL3.PDF, PDF page 629
Asbury’s zeal and spirit are revealed here. The Norfolk society seems to be in a good spiritual state. Asbury is reporting on Europe as well as America.
[MYRICK’S, VIRGINIA],
February 8, 1815
[TO THE SOCIETY AT NORFOLK, VIRGINIA]
Dearly beloved in the Lord:
Grace and peace and health and life, spiritual and temporal and eternal, attend us in our Great Redeemer. You are happily united. You use all the means of grace. You love as brethren and sisters in Jesus. You are frequent and fervent in prayer, you visit the sick and comfort the mourners and sooth the sorrows of the afflicted and dying. Surely we will not fear the terror by night, the arrows that flyeth by day, nor the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor the destruction that wasteth at noon-day. Let a thousand fall at our sides and ten thousand at our right hand, the Almighty, can preserve us, if we set our love and confidence on, and in Him.
John Early1 wrote you your friend, Francis, was coming quick to see you. Sampson like, he at other times would go out, as his body cannot keep pace with his mind, a failure in his health, the providence of God, and things generally preventeth his visits once a year. It is not enough we have rode since the month of June 3,000 miles, I would have rode 1,200 from the South Carolina to the Virginia Conference, but the man, the horses fail, roads in bad order, of the affliction in head not heart, we are in immortal [?] till our work is done. So after traveling 700 miles last month, so after coasting from Milledgeville to Charleston, and New Bern and Tarborough, we are taking a straight course to Lynchburgh.
You ask, watchman, what of the night! We believe the morning cometh and also the night! in the Church of God and this continent. But God’s ministers are greatly humbled and united; so also the people of God. Your friend feeleth for you, he still moveth as he hath done from 15 years [old] to the 6 month of 70th year of his age, for 49 years he hath visited seaports in Europe and America; he delighteth to do it, still the popularity of these places, the communication, the privileges, the opportunity of preaching to such multitudes of the inhabitants of the sea, upon land. The brethren help those sisters that are doing good. The pious of all denominations in Europe are awake. Sending the printed word into all lands and languages, sending missionaries to Africa, Asia and isles of the seas, educating children in Sabbath schools, the bringing home Abraham’s children, and if two parts of the earth should be cut off and die the third shall come through the fire; and yet a little while and Lebanon subject to high cultivation shall be counted for a forest, yet judgment shall dwell in the wilderness and righteousness remain in the fruitful field. The increase of about 30,000 in two years in the Methodist Society in Europe still declareth God is with His church, His ministers and the latter day glory sweetly drawing near.
We must commend you to God and the word of His grace.
Yours in Jesus,
F. ASBURY
Roanoke [Chapel],2 Brunswick County, Virginia
P.S. We desire the stationed preacher or some person may read the epistle to the Society in Norfolk.
The Historical Society of the Philadelphia Conference and Old St. George’s Methodist Church, Philadelphia
Notes (2)
- John Early, the Virginia presiding elder who later became a bishop. ↩
- Roanoke Chapel is by some (Coke and Rankin) placed in North Carolina. Asbury, Early, Bennett, Meade, and Mason placed it in Virginia. It is not clear where the original chapel was; but it was in St. Andrew’s Parish, which was the Brunswick Parish. There is no evidence of any Established Church preaching in the section of North Carolina referred to before 1749; and Roanoke Chapel, an old Established Church, was built in 1733 or 1734. The quarterly conference records for 1798 to 1805 show Roanoke Chapel on the Greensville Circuit. The book kept by Edward Dromgoole is in the Dromgoole collection at the University of North Carolina library. (See William Meade, Old Churches and Families of Virginia, II, 476-77.) ↩