Hearne History - Page 491

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the Indians. (This doubtless had much to do with his going as a missionary to them. - W. T. H.) In the year 1815 I was made a class-leader in a society formed by old Brother Ashworth. 1820 I was at a conference at Nashville, when Cousin Ehenezer Hearne and others urged me to accept license to preach, which I did. That fall I went to Indiana to see an uncle, a Baptist preacher that had said there were infants in hell not a span long. We had a long talk and I was sorry for him. He professed among the Methodists in North Carolina, I heard him preach once.

"I cannot refrain from noting just here, that I have frequently, when a boy, heard the same expression attributed to some primitive Baptist preachers, but I have never heard one say it, and cannot conceive how any one could say or believe such a thing. In 1853 Rev. Wm. H. Forsythe, a noted Presbyterian minister, lived near neighbor to my brother Ro bert. who was also a Presbyterian. and told Robert that Rev. Thomas P. Dudley, a primitive Baptist preacher, had often said so from the pulpit soon after this, Robert met old Brother Dudley at the house of a mutual friend. and asked Mr. Dudley about it, when he denied it most emphatically. and pronounced it utterly absurd. We had all known the Dudley family quite well; they were prominent and influential, and Thomas P. Dudley was one of the most learned and cultured preachers I ever listened to; he and his father, Ambrose Dudley, between them, had the pastorate of Bryan's Station Church, near Lexington, Ky., for one hundred and ten years, the longest pastorate I have ever known bv father and son Ambrose Dudley served a soldier through the entire Revolutionary War, and the son, Thomas P., served three years of the War of 1812, and was in the disastrous "Dudley's defeat"; he was captured by the indians and endured the greatest hardships. I give it as my candid opinion that he could quote more Scripture. with perfect accuracy, than any one I have ever known ; time and again have I heard him call down a brother preacher when he quoted some Scripture incorrectly; and I can say further, that I have never known a preacher of any denomination that was more loved and respected by all classes of people."

The old man seems to have made quite a missionary tour through Ind. and Ill., and, on account of chills and ague, returned to Tenn. in the fall, and was appointed to the Beech River

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Copyright (c) 1999, 2007 Brian Cragun.