''St. Austin's meditations were this day
made no small blessing to my soul."

But more interesting is his whiling his
time with the Eclogues and Georgics of
Virgil which "by a kind of magic power
convey me to fields and groves and purling
brooks, and paint before my eyes all the
feigned beauties of Arcadia, and would al-
most persuade me that it was possible to be
happy without God. However, they serve
now and then to unbend the mind."

The Methodist preachers received Coke
with heartiness — no one more so than As-
bury. Wesley's scheme— at least parts of
it— was laid before them, and one of the
most zealous and respected of preachers —
Garretson — was sent to summon his labor-
ers to a Conference which should meet
at Baltimore to consider the plan. Ac-
cordingly on December 24, 1784, the



The Organization of the Church 91

preachers came together. And here it will
not be amiss to quote a contemporary
opinion of G)ke— that by one of the ablest
of the members of that band of humble
preachers who were to organize a Church
whose future growth and influence was to
transcend those venerable and proud ecclesi-
asticisms which had been for centuries
in possession of the field, and which looked
down with scorn and sometimes with per-
secuting animosity on this "ignorant and
fanatical" intruder in the great harvest
field. **At first," says Thomas. Ware, "I
was not pleased with his (Coke's) appear-
ance. His stature, complexion and voice
resembled that of a woman rather than of a
man ; and his manners were too courtly for
me. So unlike was he to the grave and, as
1 conceived, apostolic Asbury that his ap-
pearance did not prepossess me favorably.
