William Wilberforce

1. 1770–1771Whitefield dies in America; Asbury sails for itWhitefield died at Newburyport, Massachusetts, on September 30, 1770, after crossing the Atlantic seven times. He had asked in his will that John Wesley preach his funeral sermon in London, and Wesley did, in November. Ten months later Francis Asbury volunteered at the Bristol conference and sailed for America, where he would ride an estimated quarter of a million miles over forty-five years.
2. 1779*Olney Hymns*Newton and his neighbor, the poet William Cowper, published the hymns they had written for the weekly meetings at Olney. Number forty-one in the first book was Newton's own testimony, set down for a New Year's service: "Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me."
3. December 1784The Christmas Conference, BaltimoreAt Lovely Lane Chapel, sixty-odd preachers formed the Methodist Episcopal Church, the movement's first independent church, in a country that had just won its independence. Thomas Coke ordained Francis Asbury, who refused the office until the preachers themselves elected him to it. Riding the circuits with Asbury was Harry Hosier, a formerly enslaved man whom many who heard both called the better preacher.
4. 1785–1791The awakening reaches ParliamentWilliam Wilberforce, a young Member of Parliament, went through what he called his Great Change in 1785, and went to old John Newton for counsel; Newton told him to stay in politics. Six days before he died in 1791, Wesley wrote Wilberforce his last letter, urging him on against "that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature." The slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807.

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