First American Annual conference in Philadelphia, 1773; those present — The minutes as printed at several times — The Rankin-Asbury contention and its grounds — Principles of the Revolution and the Methodist system in conflict; evidences — Boardman and Pilmoor return to England; other early preachers — Character of Asbury; celibacy in practice and precept — Effect upon the preachers and the people — Asbury and Rev. William Otterbein; sketch of the latter; their close friendship;
kinship of views.
The First American Annual Conference assembled at St. George's Church in Philadelphia, July 14, 1773, and continued three days. Those present were all Europeans: Thomas Rankin, Richard Boardman, Joseph Pilmoor, Francis Asbury, Richard Wright, George Shadford, Thomas Webb, John King, Abraham Whitworth, and Joseph Yearbry. Strawbridge's name appears in the printed[1]
minutes, but he was not present, nor was Embury. The minutes were taken down in writing, and in 1795 John Dickins, first Book Agent, published all the minutes from 1773 to 1795 in one volume.
They were afterward republished by Daniel Hitt and Thomas Ware for the "Methodist Connection in the United States, John C. Totten printer, 1813," and brought down to that date. They were again republished and brought down to 1839 by Mason and Lane for the Book Concern, New York, 1840.
In the edition of 1813 sundry changes were made by Coke and Asbury on their own motion, of which notice will be taken hereafter. The minutes of 1773 are very brief and follow the English model of Questions and Answers. "The following queries were proposed to every preacher: (1) Ought not the authority of Mr. Wesley, and that Conference, to extend to the preachers and people in America as well as in Great Britain and Ireland? Answer, Yes. (2) Ought not the doctrine and discipline of the Methodists, as contained in the minutes, to be the sole rule of our conduct, who labor in the connection with Mr. Wesley in America? Answer, Yes. (3) If so, does it not follow that if any preachers deviate from the minutes we can have no fellowship with them till they change their conduct? Answer, Yes." Some other rules were agreed to: to avoid administering the ordinances;
attendance upon the Episcopal Church; restrictions as to love-feasts and selling books, and reports once in six months to the superintendent. The Conference was held with closed doors, and this practice was continued, also after the English plan, for more than fifty years. It must not be assumed that there was voting as popularly understood. This Wesley discountenanced, and his American appointees did the same. The title was unique: "Minutes of some Conversations between the Preachers in Connection with the Reverend John Wesley." It was continued as a title until 1784.
Asbury did not get to the Conference of 1773 until the second day; the reason assigned by Stevens that "he was detained on his New York circuit," does not seem supported by Asbury himself, who says that "on the Lord's Day [previous] he preached twice with great plainness to a large number of people; and then set off in company with Mr. J. toward Philadelphia. Came safe to the city on Thursday, but did not find such perfect harmony as I could wish for." The Conference had met on[2]
Wednesday. A ride of nearly one hundred miles in three days was not much for such a traveler as Asbury on horseback, but it may be that it took him a day longer, and it may be also that he had other reasons for delay. The appointments of this Conference were as follows: New York, Thomas Rankin;
Philadelphia, George Shadford (to change in six months with Rankin); New Jersey, John King, William Watters; Baltimore, Francis Asbury, Robert Strawbridge, Abraham Whitworth, Joseph Yearbry; Norfolk, William Wright; Petersburg, Robert Williams. Watters was received at this Conference. The numbers in society were: New York, 180; Philadelphia, 180; New Jersey, 200;
Maryland, 500; Virginia, 100; total, 1160.
Stevens says of this juncture: "Asbury labored hard to conform the American societies to Wesley's model, but met with no little resistance from both preachers and people; Rankin had been sent out for this purpose, and to these two thorough disciplinarians we owe the effective organization of the incipient Methodism of the New World." This must be granted as to the peculiar system, but in[3]
view of all the consequences that followed in American history its wisdom may be doubted. Wesley's plan for England and that same plan for America, with its differentiation of environment, was like an attempt to make an exotic of an indigenous plant. The friction complained of, and the insubordination experienced by these leaders were much of it due to this difference; but the preachers and the societies were laid upon the Procrustean bed and shortened or lengthened accordingly. It must be admitted, however, that no satisfactory argument can be made before the facts against the system that did prove itself effective and potential. In tracing its outworkings it is a curious and instructive study of human nature when it is discovered how early the official, not the personal, relations of these two leaders were strained. The allegations against Asbury were that he was too rigid in his discipline of preachers and people. It is not long before it is found that Asbury takes up this very charge against Rankin, his superior. To gore and to be gored are different operations. For nearly fourteen months after Rankin's arrival there is scarcely a reference to him in Asbury's Journal until, August 15, 1774, the following is noted: "I felt some convictions for sleeping too long; and my mind was troubled on account of a conversation which had passed between Mr. R. (Rankin), Mr. S.
(Shadford), and myself. But the great Searcher of hearts knoweth my intentions; and to him I submit all future events." Stevens says, "The disciplinary views of Rankin, enforced during the preceding year upon the preachers and societies, with a rigor which seemed to some of them hardly tolerable, had produced salutary effects generally." And again, "Even Asbury hesitated at his rigor, but was conciliated by seeing his own judgment followed in detail, though 'stubbornly opposed' at first." [4]
Asbury had already settled it in his own mind that Methodists in America, when the time should be ripe for it, should be organized on an Episcopal basis. The necessities of the societies in the wilds of America made ultimate separation from Wesley a foregone conclusion, and he patiently bided his time. Rankin, with no such ulterior purpose, furthered unconsciously the plan. The local preachers who had preceded Wesley's missionaries and the native preachers, as they arose, had clear convictions of their scriptural right to govern themselves and "feed the flock of Christ over which the Holy Ghost had made them overseers" by administering the ordinances. The logic of the situation was all on their side. Stevens candidly admits it, though carefully guarding his admissions: "A great proportion of the colonists had no traditional attachment to the Anglican Church; the submissive policy of Wesley in England was therefore irrelevant in America. He was too distant to perceive the fact; and his representatives were too Anglican to recognize it, but many of the American Methodists, and some of their preachers, were wiser. They insisted upon their right to the sacraments from their own pastors. Theoretically, none of us now can dispute their claim; . . . the men who then seemed radical in this respect were so simply because they had a superior foresight of the predestined importance and needs of American Methodism." Every year, and its events, only strengthened the[5]
independent thinkers among preachers and people in their views. The sentiments and principles underlying the American Revolution were budding in the colonies. At this time they were nearly ready to bloom. The friction between the English Crown and its American subjects heated and smoked and finally flamed. To those entertaining paternal ideas of government the contention was unwise and uncalled for. It was simple enough in the abstract, but meant chains or liberty in the concrete. A Stamp Act and a duty upon tea, had crystallized into the war-cry, "No Taxation without Representation," and they took their lives in their hands against the theory of Non-resistance and Passive Obedience. Quite a strong Tory party dissented from the revolutionists, not so much that they were less American, but by reason of a fear that with separation from the Crown would come the loss of the entire English common law, and so a breakdown of all civil safeguards. In these circumstances the clergy of English nativity, and they were nearly all such, began to desert their parishes and return home, while not a few of those who remained were of questionable morals, from a Methodist point of view at least. There can be no doubt that these views, reflected upon the Methodist societies made up of native-born people, would have ultimated in a Presbyterian system. Dr. Coke so confesses in his famous letter to the Bishop of London in 1799: "But I return (to England and the National Church) with a full conviction that our numerous societies in America would have been a regular Presbyterian Church, if Mr. Wesley and myself had not taken the steps which we judged it necessary to adopt." McCaine's note upon this extract is fair and judicial. As already admitted, no argument[6]
before the fact in favor of this system as against the hierarchic one of Asbury can be made, but[7]
after the fact it is clear from the equal success of a liberal polity joined to the doctrines and means of grace, both in England and America, that it would have been happy for American Methodism in the conservation of its future organic unity, if a balanced and representative polity had been adopted when organization finally took place. Thus it is seen how early the issue was joined between the two systems. How the one came to prevail over the other shall be told in the future. While the contention was proceeding, from 1773 to 1784, the current of history must not be overlooked with brevity of reference.
Boardman and Pilmoor do not appear in the list of appointments of 1773. They had resolved to return to England. Stevens assigns the one reason for it that they were loyal to the Crown and foresaw the war coming on. How much supersedure, first by Asbury and then by Rankin, had to do with it must remain unwritten history. They tarried in the country about six mouths, and then re-embarked for England, January 2, 1774. They left 2073 members in society, 10 regular organized circuits, and 17 preachers. Boardman resumed his travels in Ireland, was greatly useful, and continued until September, 1782, when he died suddenly of apoplexy and was borne to his grave by his brethren with lyrics and rejoicing. Pilmoor desisted from travel for two years, then received an appointment in London and at several other points. He dropped out in 1785, returned to America, took orders in the Protestant Episcopal Church, was stationed in Philadelphia as rector of St. Paul's Church, to whose pulpit he often invited Asbury, Coke, and others. He lived to a good old age and died in peace. Captain Webb also returned, and on his retired pay spent a number of years as a local preacher, died suddenly, and was greatly honored by his brethren. Jarratt and McRoberts, two clergymen in Virginia, were exceptions to their order; the former, specially devout and spiritual,[8]
cooperated with the Methodist preachers through life, though he strongly objected to the organization of the societies into a Church in 1784. He kept up an intimacy with Asbury, was as zealous and evangelical as any of the preachers, and a loyal churchman to the end.
Lednum has preserved the name of John Smith as the first itinerant in Kent County, Md., and whose remains repose at Hinson's chapel. Philip Gatch entered in 1773, though his name does not appear in the minutes until 1774. Judge McLean has left a monograph of him. Nathan Perigo was a powerful local preacher who cooperated with Strawbridge. Benjamin Abbott appeared in New Jersey about 1773, and, though not named in the minutes, he was a zealous itinerant and one of the most memorable names in early Methodism. He was an original character and a unique preacher in matter and manner. Stevens devotes twelve pages to a recital of the salient events of his phenomenal career, and a monograph of his labors was made by John Firth, New York, 1854. The results of his preaching were of the most extraordinary character, and thousands owned him as their spiritual father. He lies buried under the shadow of the Methodist church in Salem, N. J. Abraham Whitworth, already named, must be painfully recorded as the first apostate. He fell from grace and ran into evil habits, and the closing trace of him is his enlistment in the British army as a soldier, and his death in one of the engagements with the American forces.
Daniel Ruff was converted in 1771, became a local, and afterward an itinerant, preacher for a brief period, but was eminently useful, Asbury being his eulogist. Shadford, one of the regulars, merits farther notice. He was a man of very respectable parts and conspicuously useful, a familiar of Asbury's, and this is saying much, for he had few confidants. They were as David and Jonathan, Stevens says, and when he returned to England with Rankin his departure was greatly regretted.
Occasion will occur to mention him once more in the future in association with an event of Asbury's career.
Returning to Asbury as the master spirit of them all, he was at once in his saddle after the adjournment of the first Conference of 1773, journeying southward to Baltimore. His health had already been broken by his excessive labors and exposures, but he rose superior to bodily suffering, often riding all day with a burning fever upon him. He was susceptible to malaria, and, riding by day and night in fever-stricken sections, he imbibed the seeds of bilious distempers from which he was rarely ever free through life. Delivered from the entanglements of Conference, and the care the human side of him took to preserve or recover leadership, to which he was born, his soul was ever aspiring to purity and love. He was then seen at his best. It was this devout consecration to God that won from his traveling companions in after years such remarkable tributes. A man cannot easily dissemble with those who ride with him all day, eat with him, and sleep with him, and mark his temper under trials and temptations. They read one's character and are able to compare it with reputation. Asbury's Journal is full of spiritual aspirings, with tinges of sadness and depreciation, the result of his melancholy under sickness. It was this character that made Henry Boehm declare:
"Bishop Whatcoat I loved, Bishop McKendree I admired, but Bishop Asbury I venerated." He was his traveling companion for eight years, and has left the best analysis of his whole make-up extant, as well as a good pen-picture of him. It was this character that constrained Snethen, while differing[9]
from him as to his governmental methods, to eulogize him in these words: "There was one point in which this chief man in our Israel challenges universal admiration, and that was the impulse he gave to experimental and practical religion. It is impossible for the most able of his admirers to convey, to those who knew not the man and his communication, any adequate conception of his virtue-inspiring and virtue-animating influence over the minds of the preachers." Snethen was his traveling companion for two years, and their affection was mutual, and from no one, perhaps, did Asbury receive with more patience contradiction of his views and policy. It was this character that
led John Wesley Bond, his last traveling companion for two years, to nurse him like a mother nurses her sick child and to be with him in his final hours.
Asbury carried his asceticism to the extreme of an anchorite. He rigorously fasted every Friday and on special occasions. He was cast in the mold of Ignatius Loyola, and had he lived in the sixteenth century might have vied with him as a leader. Indeed, it will be seen as progress is made in his life-story that, perhaps unconsciously to himself, he exemplified and was molding his preachers to adopt the triple vow of the Order of Jesus — poverty, chastity, and obedience. His love of leadership and the necessities it imposed of a personal superintendency of preachers and people scattered over thousands of miles of a wild and almost trackless territory, made its duties paramount to every other consideration, even the appeals of nature for conjugal association, so that he not only remained a bachelor through life, but discouraged marriage in the preachers by both his example and precept. The poverty grew out of the straitened circumstances of the people, the obedience was a primal law of the inchoate Church, and the chastity grew out of both these conditions. The result was that youth and inexperience were the rule among the itinerants. A few would hold out until thirty or forty years of age before they married, and this meant location or a narrow sphere of travel. This state of things continued during Asbury's life. Henry Boehm cites the case of the Virginia Conference of 1809, which he attended with Asbury. It was composed of eighty-four preachers, and but three of them married. It was no exception. He says: "It was properly called the 'Bachelor' Conference. We also had bachelor bishops." McKendree was the associate now and he imitated Asbury in his celibacy, but had no successor. It is open to proof that when a preacher married, unless he joined himself to some worldly means as well, Asbury expressed his disapproval by giving him an appointment of the scantiest living, often of necessity, but not infrequently to exhibit his disapprobation. [10] It was unwholesome in every sense, but its ready obedience and self-sacrifice are as clear as the same conditions in the Roman hierarchy, which in not a few features it so closely followed. The people were poor, but it contradicts all that is known of human nature to conclude that they would not have supported married men as well. The celibate life seemed the choice of the preachers; there was a timid sensitiveness among them not to be open to the charge that they were
"preaching for money"; sixty-four dollars a year sufficed for all the material wants of the preachers, often not more than half of it received; they had no participation in the government, so that it soon grew upon them to believe that, as in Wesley's time, the trinity of virtues for a layman was: to pray, pay, and obey. It was a vicious system in some of its tendencies. But the martyr-like sufferings, the toils, the zeal, the fervid spirit, the tearful preaching of men whose convictions and experience were as deep and solemn as the grave, condoned for these tendencies; and the circuit rider, not to say the presiding elder and the bishop when the paternal plan crystallized, were received into the humble homes of the people almost like messengers from another world. The Roman priest and the Methodist preacher in this regard had no parallel, and it has not yet died out of the popular heart. He talked religion at the fireside, and could be heard praying often at odd hours of the night. In much it was virtue-imparting to him and virtue-inspiring to them; and in this the time never was when Asbury could not say to the most consecrated of his helpers, "Follow me as I follow Christ." He says in his Journal, "I have little leisure for anything but prayer; seldom more than two hours in the day, and that space I wish to spend in retired meditation and prayer." Again, "I find it expedient to spend an hour in prayer for myself alone; and an hour each morning and evening for all the preachers and people." Once more, "I see the need of returning to my twelve times of prayer," and much more to the same effect. The apostle's injunction to "Pray without ceasing " is now better understood even