Undated — to Daniel Hitt

DAVENPORT’S, VA.

Aug. 2, 1806

[TO DANIEL HITT]

Dearly Beloved Daniel:

Mayest thou be a man highly favored of God. Divine providence has suddenly locked my wheels of motion; I have been for 9 days a most afflicted man. I have in my midnight hours, viewed our temporal & spiritual state of things. Oh! for an American General Superintendency, if I am their servant. Sure I am, if the Americans are not old enough to govern themselves now, they never will, then they must for life be in leading strings. All the prospects of this world are dead to me, I feel not a wish for creatures or things. The glory of the Kingdom of Christ, the organization of a primitive Church of God, these are all my objects; was it possible to set a glass to my heart, you should see them engraven there by the word & spirit of the living God.

Simpson’s view of the Church of England is all the abomination of desolation: Simpson renounced the twin sister to the whore of Babylon, but God took him to himself; good man, his son has printed his last Book and recantation. Br. George has seen it, and can furnish you the reading. I wish Neal would print it; it would give the Episcopalians a sour face. You will conclude, I am very weak, by my worse than bad writing. I have only prefaced what I have to write. By my authority I wish to write to all the Presiding Elders of the Baltimore Conference, not in imperious commands, but by Socratic questions; & it is not proper the Preachers of the Baltimore Conference, ought not to draw their supplies from the people they labor among, and if the people are not willing and alas now, when will they be? After 30 years more are gone? State a case for —— between Baltimore and the New-England Conference: Say Baltimore has 80 Preachers, and 26,000 members, many very wealthy, (no other church demands, or poor to support.) Adding dollar to dollar, and field to field: say the living of the Preachers is 25 or 30 per cent superior to New- England. Say New-England 78 preachers, 20 married men, poor wives, many poor children, having little or nothing, neither houses nor homes, waggoning their families from place to place, having only clothing poor in quality, more so in quantity. Say the New-England Conference have 10,000 members to support them; members poor, houses of children laboring like slaves in Virginia, night & day, taxed by the spurious race of the first genuine Puritans, the present holding only the form & superstition of Religion: Oh! in the great grand children, how are the mighty fallen? taxed to build houses to grace the Town, where all the best of the parish may meet as grand as in Solomon’s Temple; after this taxed to pay a hypocritical Priest, the devils agent, the peoples tool & fool; and opposes of all living religion and every Methodist Preacher that comes in the parish, If he had nothing to do before, he will move then. Now if it is right that the Baltimore Conference should be pampered into the perfection of the ministry, and Christian perfection, and the New-England Conference to be starved into it, Judge thou.

It was moved by the Superintendency and Conference, that the Committee’s list of claims should be brought in, it was done, and then it was moved again that ways of supplies should not be gone into till every man had given in flax, wool, Rye, anything, or everything he had received from the people, this was done without a murmur; then all they had received was charged as quarterage, they could not go to ripping of bellies, finally making no provision for Children, deficiency 3000 dollars. Tis my opinion that the Baltimore Conference members of the Society will support their preachers, if the Conference would let them know they do not; by letter from Conference, finally, after my letter of shorthand, I wish the Baltimore Conference to hold their right, to draw their dividend, & put it into the hands of the Book Stewards and donate the money, giving each Annual Conference with the Superintendency, liberty to appropriate their bounty, and draw on the Stewards. I am thine.

F. ASBURY

Letters to Daniel Hitt, Ohio Wesleyan University Library