January 15, 1816 — to Joseph Benson

Wofford College, original copy used in Nashville Advocate, March 10, 1916. Drew University, second copy used in New York

Christian Advocate, March 16, 1916

As Asbury came to the close of his life, he put down in this letter which was written by his amanuensis, Thomas Mason, a résumé of his ministerial life and especially his relationship to Wesley. It is probably the most important of all his letters and perhaps the most interesting. It gives an insight into his relationship to the British brethren and especially tells of his conflicts with Thomas Rankin, whom he calls “Diotrephes.”

SOUTH CAROLINA

January 15, 1816

[TO JOSEPH BENSON]¹

My venerable and elder brother² in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ and the glorious ministry of the gospel of the grace of God, all hail: We have lived to see better days than our predecessors and ancient contemporaries. I recollect not to have seen your face, to have known you, or to have the least passing interview with you; but when I was a youth between fifteen and sixteen years of age, you were a man, and President³ of Kingswood School, which must be, in my calculation, between fifty and fifty-five years past. Though I was active some years, and frequently called upon to supply⁴ for the traveling connection, and traveled the first year nine or ten months (though less or more, I cannot say correctly) in the Staffordshire Circuit, the Circuit in which I lived, in the place of William Orpe,⁵ the four Conference years⁶ that I traveled were in Bedford and Salisbury alternately. From thence I came to America and am now in the forty-fifth year of my mission, which will close next October the twentieth. I have been broken, breach upon breach, by affliction, so that I am at present completely superannuated, having passed, last August, the twenty-first, the first period of the life of man; and it has been for some years past a permanent sentiment with me that in such a case no man high in office, however great in qualifications, should stand in high responsibility in the Church of God, but rather retire and give place to younger and stronger men in body and mind, such as our junior superintendent, to whom I have ceded the presidential chair of every Annual Conference for these seven years past. It was also my pleasure, when present, always to give Dr. Coke the president’s chair. Glory to God, our houses are set in order! Our order of things is such that we have about fifty-five presiding elders, that by turns of four years at farthest, yet movable at any time when the episcopacy judge of the importance of the case. These presiding elders serve a probation of seven or fourteen years in large and very consequential districts and have their quarterly meeting Conferences of the official departments of the local ministry, possibly in some large circuits of long standing, that compose from sixty to eighty, or near one hundred members and examine characters, try cases, admit and give authority to exhorters and local preachers, examine local preachers and local deacons for election and ordination to deacons’ and elders’ office in the Annual Conference. These presiding elders, in the absence of a bishop, and rule well, are counted worthy of double honor. In the absence of a bishop appointed by him, if not appointed to be elected by the Conference to preside in, and do the business of the Annual Conference. And we have the pleasure to believe that such is their age and improvement that we have not only a half a dozen, but a dozen, if called to preside in an Annual Conference, who would do it with ease, dignity, and correctness, assisted by their brethren, the presiding elders.

If a bishop, at any distance where a mail can go, has consequential business to the whole Conference, he has only to communicate to one man; he to write to the other presiding elders; they to communicate to the men who have charge of stations and circuits; the work is done.

Bishops in Greece or Rome, what have they been in frightful forms? What have they been, men or fiends? Bishops in our age, among the Presbyterians and Independent Churches, the Baptists, and the commonality of the people are ready to suppose that a bishop is a tyrant, the same as a pope, dreadful, dangerous creatures. Possibly some very wise men, with all their Hebrew, Greek and Latin, have not found out the pure derivation of that word. It is very near to a perfect German word, in both consonants and vowels, admitting the German pronunciation and the English pronunciation to differ, “bischoff,” the chief minister. With us a bishop is a plain man, altogether like his brethren, wearing no marks of distinction, advanced in age, and by virtue of his office can sit as president in all the solemn assemblies of the ministers of the gospel; and many times, if he is able, called upon to labor and suffer more than any of his brethren; no negative or positive in forming Church rules; raised to a small degree of constituted and elective authority above all his brethren; and in the executive department, power to say, “Brother, that must not be, that cannot be,” having full power to put a negative or a positive in his high charge of administration; and, even in the Annual Conference to correct the body or any individual that may have transgressed or would transgress and go over the printed rules by which they are to be governed, and bring up every man and everything to the printed rules of order established in the form of Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America. It is an established maxim with us that if a man is not well taught and practiced in obedience to know how to serve, he will never know how to have command or be fit to take any office in the Church of God, and that stubborn, disobedient men must be mended, though it will take much time and more labor.

Several brethren among us have sincerely wished that there could be some mode of communication and union, such as can take place, considering distance and circumstances, and administration, and order, between us and the parent society. We have hoped it would be for the best, then again we have feared we should not find safe hands to put our business into the British Conference to conduct, and that misunderstandings and misrepresentations might bring us into trouble and bring on a greater separation; and I can truly say for one, that the greatest affliction and sorrow of my life was that our dear father,⁷ from the time of the Revolution to his death, grew more and more jealous of myself and the whole American connection; that it appeared we had lost his confidence almost entirely. But he rigidly contended for a special and independent right of governing the chief minister or ministers of our order, which, in our judgment, went not only to put him out of office, but to remove him from the continent to elsewhere, that our father saw fit; and that, notwithstanding our constitution and the right of electing every church officer and more especially our superintendent. Yet we were told, “Not till after the death of Mr. Wesley” our constitution could have its full operation.

For many years before this time we lived in peace and trusted in the confidence and friendship of each other. But after the Revolution, we were called upon to give a printed obligation which here follows, and which could not be dispensed with, it must be: “During the life of the Rev. Mr. Wesley, we acknowledge ourselves his sons in the gospel; ready, in matters belonging to church government to obey his commands; and we do engage, after his death, to do everything that we judge consistent with the cause of religion in America and the political interests of the States, to preserve and promote our union with the Methodists in Europe.”⁸ Our people and preachers were coming out of their childhood, they thought for themselves. If this obligation was necessary, why not introduced in former years, in better times? Matters are strangely changed; much blood has been shed; the minds of the citizens of the United States and the United Kingdom must be exceedingly changed and soured against each other, and the state of things will never be as it has been between the two countries. Some said that the citizens of both countries are so much alike that we shall have war again in ten, twenty, or thirty years. Foreigners by thousands coming to our country and cursing their own; pushing themselves into office, and blowing the coals of strife; magnifying small offenses; raising mountains out of molehills; a word and a blow; stricken by wicked and imperious officers that don’t know their duty; putting to death a most ancient and noble British character; and a grand and noble and generous and affable American character dying swiftly. And yet both sides crying out, “If you cannot lead us, you shall not drive us”; and both sides going to driving as hard as they can with fire and sword.

Mr. Wesley is to this day, and always has been, respected and loved by hundreds and thousands in America as a great apostolic man; and hundreds of children continually named after him—yea, thousands. In America some of our enemies know that of all the good and holy men that our dear John the divine of London, and John⁹ the divine of Madeley, at the time of the Revolution, had written more on worldly affairs than any gospel men in Europe or America. I spare the dead, and yet I think that a degree of justice is due to the memory of such an apostolic man as John Wesley, I perfectly clear him in my own mind, and lay the whole business upon Diotrephes,¹⁰ of the Tower of London. Little did I think that we had such an enemy that had the continual ear and confidence of Mr. Wesley. This I believe from good testimony, eye- and ear-witnesses, who, some years after, when they saw that my mind was so deeply afflicted that I did not get clear of it for some years after Mr. Wesley’s death. Dr. Coke and John Harper¹¹ told me what they had seen and heard and known and felt. Dr. Coke said that as often as Mr. Wesley went to see Diotrephes, he came back with his mind strangely agitated and dissatisfied with the American connection; that he did not know what to do to put him to rights; And the counsel of Diotrephes, in a full Conference, was in substance this: “If he [Diotrephes] had the power and authority of Mr. Wesley, he would call Frank Asbury home directly.” John Harper was the man who was present in the Conference¹² and heard this advice given and told me several years after in America with his own mouth. Yet I spare the dead and must write the truth, that he [Diotrephes] wrote to the Messrs. Wesley for counsel and advice in our critical situation, advice which we thought truly apostolic and worthy of the minister of the gospel of the Son of God, in substance was to give as little offense as possible either to Jew or Gentile or to the Church of God; to have nothing to do with the affairs of this world if he could help it, and mind the business of our spiritual calling. Diotrephes made this instruction pretty public among the preachers and the people, and then they charged him with violating every part of it. He was positive beyond all description that the Americans should be brought back to the old government, and that immediately. It appeared to me that his object was to sweep the Continent of every preacher that Mr. Wesley had sent to it and of every respectable traveling preacher from Europe who had graduated among us, whether English or Irish. He told us that if we returned to our native country, we should be esteemed as such obedient, loyal subjects that we should obtain ordination in the grand Episcopal Church of England and come back to America with high respectability after the war was ended. Francis did not believe it; and he possessed a senior right after the removal of Boardman and Pilmoor,¹³ and God had given him souls for his hire and souls for his charge among the people, and a number of eminent preachers, both traveling and local, wanted nothing but a man to go in and out before them to give them, if we had not books, order and discipline by the word of mouth. Francis thought as he had possession, it was best to hold it, especially when abundance of respectable members said, “Will you leave us? Will you leave us?” And it was the general language of the American people and preachers that those preachers from Europe who were dissatisfied with the measures of the country, had better go home. At the death of Mr. Wesley, two of his European disciples asked another, “Who will preach his funeral sermon? Who will write his Life?” They corrected themselves by saying: “Mr. Wesley has written his own life better than any other man can write it.” And O that it had been so!¹⁴ or that if anything had been done, it had been after the model of the Life of the Vicar of Madeley, compiled by Joseph Benson, which has been made an unspeakable blessing to my mind in reading it. It has been impressed with great weight upon my mind for several years that it was my indispensable duty to write to some person in London or elsewhere a true and correct account, because I think that Mr. Wesley has been reproached beyond anything that was thrown upon him before that period by the London writer¹⁵ of his “Life.” You will examine, as an early contemporary of the Oxford Methodists and the last branch of that order, you will see in substance that with respect to the American ordination Mr. Wesley is represented as invading and usurping all Church order.¹⁶ And yet the author grants if Mr. Wesley had been elected and chosen by the American preachers and people, it would have been in gospel order and proper. Did that author know, or was he ignorant? Why did he write in the dark? When people of Mr. Wesley’s charge in America, many thousands, under total privation of the ordinances of God, and most of the Episcopalians had deserted their stations and Churches from almost every part of the continent. The Presbyterians held no open communion. The Methodists could not become Presbyterians in sentiment, they would not be Baptists, neither Independents.

When the preachers first came to the continent, with what affection they were received! Multitudes came forward as constant hearers and members of the society, and immediately the tables of the Lord in their former Churches were closed against them. When our brethren would say, “O that you had been ordained to administer the ordinances of God to us!” it was of no account to say the Episcopal bishops would not ordain us. “Mr. Wesley should have ordained you.” And thus for fourteen or fifteen years hundreds and thousands of preachers and people crying continually the universal election of Mr. Wesley to ordain ministers for America, because he was, as we believe, an apostolic man, admitting upon trial and into connection the preachers of his charge, governing and stationing every one of them, that he came short only in ordination. Now, sir, I submit it to you, if Dr. Whitehead’s “Life” of Mr. Wesley, if there is power and authority in any part of your body, in justice to Mr. Wesley (asking no mercy), when called upon by hundreds and thousands for so long a time to exercise the third branch of apostolic power in ordination, and that hundreds and thousands, preachers and people have blessed and praised God for the wisdom given to Mr. Wesley and the Baltimore General Conference in 1784, to form upon such pure principles a truly apostolic Church, the success which has attended the labors of its ministers. We must say that Dr. Whitehead’s history must be corrected according to this testimony, or suppressed, as containing a defamation of that man of God, Mr. John Wesley, and the whole body of American Methodists, We feel determined to stand in apostolic order and gospel ground. Acts 13:2, 3—”Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. And with fasting and prayer they laid their hands on them.” And Acts 14:23—A distinct name, office and order—elders in the Church of God. (Acts 6:6.)

Never since was any man, for so many years, called upon to ordain ministers for America; never since could a people be so overjoyed and conform so universally as with one heart and mind. This was what we wanted and requested from year to year; and we have obtained it at last. Bless God and bless Mr. Wesley!

We do not suffer one officer in the Church of God to assume or invade the rights of another; a licensed exhorter to be always attempting to preach; a traveling or local preacher must not baptize without ordination; a deacon, traveling or local, administer the Lord’s supper but under the order of an elder. On no account will we suffer the elders to ordain alone, but to come forward when called upon by the bishop, in names and numbers, to assist in the ordination of elders. We do not suffer our presiding elders to invade any singular rights of the episcopacy.

This simple method which we have followed from the beginning in the management of our temporal affairs: our stewards are elected in every conference. They call first on every preacher belonging to the conference to know what they have received for quarterage in the stations and districts wherein they have labored the year past. By doing this they come immediately to a sight, what preachers have already received their full demand and what preachers are deficient, according to our rules of discipline. Then they call for all the collections that have been brought in, with $200 per conference from the book interest and $140 from the Chartered Fund, small matters! and the dividend must be made among twelve conferences in the year instead of nine.

We send you our mite subscription¹⁷ to let you see what additional wonders we can perform by the blessing of God, more especially when we hear such accounts from your side of the water, of all the churches that have been maintaining the local ministry sending out traveling ministers to the ends of the earth. We wish them success in the name of the Lord. They are coming right at last! But hail Wesley, hail Oxford Methodists, who, seventy years ago, formed an apostolic society and sent forth their traveling preachers in apostolic order! Blessed be God that a number of simple men from the Oxford Methodists were directed to establish an apostolic Church and put the government in the hands of traveling preachers! And yet there must be men that cannot continue to travel and others that sincerely wish, but have it not in their power, to travel who may be useful and enjoy all their rights and privileges in their local state, and the traveling minister held sacred and made the very best of all their superior privileges.

And concerning ordination, that it ought to be held sacred and considered as the helm of good order, we believe. In every age of the Church it has been, and now is, held sacred.

We have heard of a few simple people here and there, hardly worthy of being members of the church, pleading their right to sit down with each other, if it be every day, and receive and administer the Lord’s supper one to another; therefore, we conclude that churches and societies ought to examine well what bearing their sayings and doings will lead to, whether they will introduce division and confusion, or unity and good order in the house of God, in the body of Christ.

Will you, my dear Sir, do what you can, at this late hour of life, as our agent to the British Conference? And, if you please, call a confidential and younger man to your assistance. Will you examine well any letters and communications from America, and judge how far it may be proper to print any of them in the United Kingdoms, and where and in what manner any difficulties may be explained and methods of gospel order be brought into operation? We have planted, we have watered, we have taken a most sacred charge of Upper and Lower Canada for about 22 years.¹⁸ They form two respectable districts in the Genesee Conference. They lie side by side on the northern banks of the St. Lawrence, and the United States’ districts and circuits on the south. The souls of our people in Canada are exceedingly precious to us. They are a willing people; prompt to pay their preachers. They say: “Tell us what to do, and we’ll do it.” Exclusive of the most ancient, who came from various parts of Europe, the additional and increasing inhabitants now, of both provinces, are multitudes of refugees who went from the United States at the time of the Revolution. Many others have preferred the Provinces to the United States; and there are at this time large family connections on both sides of the line; and many preachers that have changed and interchanged. The manner in which Montreal was taken possession of, and is now held, will not, cannot, be dispensed with by the General Conference, by the Annual Conference, or by the presiding elder of Lower Canada. Thomas Birch, one of His Majesty’s subjects, late from Ireland, was sent to Montreal in the very moment of time, just at the commencement of the war, and was permitted to stay a year longer than our constitution grants, (the state of the case justifying it), and returned to the United States with an honorable recommendation from the society. That Samuel Montgomery should be sent, with the greatest expedition, six hundred miles to supply the place of Thomas Birch, that Samuel (one of His Majesty’s subjects, late from Ireland) should be prevented from taking his charge by the British missionary! And who is to examine Mr. Williams’s¹⁹ conduct? Mr. Bennett, of the province of Nova Scotia? The British Conference or the Directors of the Missionary Society?

Henry Ryan, presiding elder of Lower Canada, made a visit to Montreal by order of the bishops and Genesee Conference, he has obtained testimonies which will be handed forward to the agent of our affairs, presented in their order. We, as ministers of Christ, think it a sin of sins to divide the body of Christ. There was special caution given to Thomas Birch, Samuel Montgomery, and Henry Ryan; and we have good reason to believe that, possibly two-thirds of the society in Montreal would put themselves under the government of the American connection. But we shall bear long, suffer long, and make every explanation, till the charge is given up to us. Whether the thing has been done through ignorance or through the influence of wicked and designing men, we shall give our fathers and brethren time to inform themselves and time to correct their conduct, for we are sure that our episcopacy could never act so out of order as to send a preacher to take possession of a charge so important under the oversight of the parent connection. And yet, in this business, we would touch that venerable body, or any authoritative part of it, with the tenderness of a feather dipt in oil. Respected brother, may our presiding elders address their letters to you, when cases of a singular nature shall occur? At present, Francis, your friend, with great difficulty, has dictated this letter. One thing more. Upon this continent we are crowded with French people, like polite heathens and barbarians to us. We want French Methodist preachers. Despairing of obtaining any from the traveling connection, since we have read your reports, our only hope is that some of our brethren from Jersey and Guernsey will come over and help us. We have employed an accomplished young Frenchman, of an extensive acquaintance with the French Methodists in those islands, to write for us, and see if such a man as we want can be obtained. And can you aid in this matter? It is our wish that a preacher, that is willing to come to America, to be well recommended by our brethren that know him, to our agent, Mr. Benson, on whose recommendation we shall depend.

My love and a thousand thanks to Mr. Blanshard²⁰ for the Minutes; to Mr. Marsden,²¹ for the reports, hoping they will continue their goodness from year to year. Let them direct to any part of the United States, to myself or the junior bishop or bishops, whose names will be known upon the Minutes of our Conferences. And should our Father and Brother Benson have any special call and communication to make, be sure to make it to one of the presiding elders, and the business will be taken up in good order. Instruction will be given by the bishops to the presiding elders, that they may be called to write to the agents of our American affairs, in London or elsewhere, and possibly to be written to from the men of our confidence in Europe.

And now may the God of all grace, with the eternal Son and ever-blessed Spirit, be with us through time and for ever and ever! Amen. Francis Asbury

I, Thomas Mason, who wrote this letter, salute my fathers and brethren in the Lord.

P.S. Mr. Wesley could not come himself to America, but he sent one²² that was well qualified. Dr. Coke and myself, were so liberal as to submit ourselves to an election, before Francis was ordained to his office as Bishop and Superintendent, at the first General Conference in Baltimore, December, 1784.

Dr. Coke, notwithstanding his visits were transitory, was very useful, both as a divine and as a classical man. He was esteemed by hundreds and thousands in America; his writings will be read with attention, his memory will be precious. The Americans knew his worth, and knew not only his labours and travels, but some of his sufferings, as he was oft compelled by necessity to take up with very mean lodgings through some of the extreme parts of our country, and at a very early settlement; as Francis who generally attended him, and many others can witness: add to this, that every visit, he had to cross and re-cross the Atlantic. ‘Tis true Dr. Coke had his troubles in America, and it is as true, that Francis Asbury had his troubles. And we heard that Mr. Wesley had his troubles, and no wonder, when he was told, and possibly made to believe, that no sooner had he granted the Americans what they wished than they declared themselves independent of him.

Had we not lived in all good confidence and fellowship for fifteen years? no complaint on our side—and no complaint that we heard of from Mr. Wesley? Why then should our generous minds be called to enter an obligation which we never had violated, and I believe there was no intention to violate? And I must believe that the Americans were the greatest friends Mr. Wesley had through Europe or the world. They had read all his books that had come to hand, they heard of all his excellencies, his labours, sufferings and success. And who with them but Mr. Wesley! almost every large and steady family among the old disciples must have a Wesley among the children. Francis had been charged (and perhaps very properly) with being a man of a gloomy mind, and sometimes a prophet of evil tidings concerning ministerial men, but many of his brethren after proper trial have confessed if they were evil, they were true in the end. Mr. Wesley wrote concerning Diotrephes, honest George²³ and Francis, “You three be as one—act by united counsels.” But who was to do that with Diotrephes? Francis had a prior right of government by special order and letter from Mr. Wesley a few months after he had been in the country; and if he could not exercise it in the cities, where the first missionaries that came over were located by necessity, having no proper men to change with them: yet Francis in the country endeavored to do the best he could. Matters did not fit well between Diotrephes and him, and poor Francis was charged with having a gloomy mind and being very suspicious and so, and so and so. It would be presumed because Francis was a little heady that Diotrephes wrote to Mr. Wesley to “call Francis home immediately.” Be it as it might, Mr. Wesley wrote such a letter to Francis, and Francis wrote in answer that he would prepare to return as soon as possible whatever the sacrifice might be. Then Diotrephes said, “You cannot go, your labours are wanted here.” Francis said, “Mr. Wesley has written for me, I must obey his order.” Diotrephes said, “I will write to Mr. Wesley and satisfy him.” Shortly after came a letter from Mr. Wesley to Francis in substance thus, “You have done very well to continue in America and help your brethren when there was such a great call.”

And now my father and brother, I know not a man in the British Connexion to write to, they are the children of forty-five or fifty years, you are the man and you were the Father when they were children. I leave these things with you to make any use, or no use of them. I have confidence in you that you will not make a bad use of them.

F.A.

This is endorsed by Joseph Benson, “Jan. 1816.”

Two copies of this address are extant: one in Methodist Book Concern, London, in Letters of Methodist Preachers, Vol. V, Folio 3, transcribed by L.E.S. Gutteridge, and the other is in Emory University Library.