CHAPTER VI. 



No. 50, America. 



(Minutes of the British Conference held in London, August 7, 1770.) 



A man of wisdom, of sound faith, and a good disciplinarian. 



(Petition to Mr. Wesley for ministerial help in America, 17G8.) 



THERE came up to the twenty-eighth annual ses- 

 sion of the British Conference, which met at 

 Bristol, in England, August 6, 1771, a Methodist 

 preacher in the twenty-sixth year of his age, who, by 

 his studious habits and conscientious fidelity in the 

 discharge of duty during five years of itinerant life, 

 had gained the full confidence and esteem of all his 

 brethren. For some time he had felt a strong desire to 

 come as a missionary to the Western Continent, and 

 had prayerfully considered the whole matter. John and 

 Charles Wesley, Ingham and Whitefield, had been 

 here years before. Embury, Webb, and Strawbridge 

 had been forming societies in various parts of the 

 country since he joined the Conference; and Board- 

 man, Pilmoor, and Williams had been two years in the 

 field, and were calling for additional laborers. Satis- 

 fied that it was the will of God that he should enter 

 upon this particular work, he conferred not with flesh 

 and blood, but as soon as Mr. Wesley called for volun- 

 teers, among the first to respond was Francis Asbury, 

 and from that moment his heart was in America. He 

 was born near Birmingham, in Staffordshire, England, 

 on the 20th or 21st day of August, 1745. In early 

 youth he listened, at West Bromwich Church, to the 

 (136) 



