CHAPTER XVI. 



The servile progeny of Ham 



Seize as the purchase of thy blood ; 



Let all the heathen know thy name : 

 From idols to the living God 



The wand'ring Indian tribes convert, 



And shine in every pagan heart. 



(Charles Wesley.) 



ON the second day of September, in 1784, Thomas 

 Coke, doctor of civil law, was ordained by Mr. 

 Wesley as a missionary bishop for the work in Amer- 

 ica. At the Christmas Conference of the same year, 

 when the Methodist Episcopal Church was organized, 

 three of the thirteen preachers elected and ordained 

 to the order of elders were set apart for mission- 

 ary labors, viz.: Freeborn Garrettson and James O. 

 Cromwell for the work in Nova Scotia, and Jeremiah 

 Lambert for the work in Antigua. When the inde- 

 pendence of the United States was established by the 

 peace of 1783, the loyalists who had borne arms in the 

 American war, being proscribed, took refuge in 

 Nova Scotia and other parts of British America, and 

 received lands at the head of the coves on the coasts. 

 During Dr. Coke's first visit to America, he was in- 

 troduced to several of those who were about to emi- 

 grate to Nova Scotia, and he then made a public col- 

 lection for their benefit in Baltimore; the American 

 friends contributing fifty pounds currency, or about 

 thirty pounds sterling, besides sixty pounds currency 

 (436) 



