“I feel some conviction for sleeping too long.
“My heart is grieved and groaneth for want of more holiness.
“Unguarded and trivial conversation has brought a degree of spiritual deadness.
“My conscience reproves me for the appearance of levity.
“A cloud rested on my mind, which was occasioned by talking and jesting. I also feel at times tempted to impatience and pride of heart.
“My heart is still depressed for want of more religion.
“Were I to stand on my own merit, where should I go but to hell?
“Here I received a bitter pill from one of my greatest friends [referring to his last letter from John Wesley]. Praise the Lord for my trials also! May they be sanctified.”
Bishop Asbury preached the same doctrine of personal conversion and sanctification that is preached by present-day Methodist ministers, and he sought this blissful state for himself with frenzied zealousness. At times he thought he had entered into what he called the full fruition of a life with God; at other times he fancied himself given up to Satan. The older he grew, the gloomier and more introspective he became, and like most of the other great religionists he had a pronounced streak of melancholia. He had alternating periods of exaltation and depression; he was either soaring the heights of religious ecstasy or floundering in the depths of sin and despair. He did not seem able to find any middle ground in which he could obtain a measure of peace and contentment; occasionally in his Journals he noted that he was happy in God and at peace, but the next entry showed him groaning in great vexation of spirit, crying out a doubt of the value of his religious life. He yearned for a constant religious thrill, and mourned because he could not satisfy his yearning.