Page:A short account of the rise and progress of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in America.djvu/64

 our case, should our proceedings meet your approbation and you should be disposed to patronise the same, we will stand ready and shall be glad to receive such advice and instruction as you may think proper to give us, through our father in the Lord, Bishop McKendree, or any other person the Conference may be pleased to appoint. On the subject of ordination to Eldership, (a privilege which our Preachers have been long deprived of,) permit us to say we might have obtained it from other sources, but we preferred and determined to follow the advice of Bishop McKendree, given to our brethren in New-York the last time he was with them, and wait until the meeting of your annual Conference in this and the District of New-York, in order to understand what encouragement we may look for from the mother church. But in consequence of some uneasiness in the minds of some of our members in New-York, occasioned by our brother Richard Allen's determination to establish a society of his connexion in that city, our brethren there have been under the necessity of solemnly electing three of their Deacons to the office of Elders, and some of their Preachers to the office of Deacons, to act only in cases of necessity, and to show to our people that our Preachers can be authorized to administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, as well as those of brother Allen's connexion, that thereby they might keep the body together; and we believe it has had the desired effect, for very few have left the Societies there, notwithstanding the efforts made to induce them to leave us. We expect that our first yearly Conference will be held in the city of New- York, on the 14th day of June next, at which we hope to have the happiness of