Elisha Bates

ELISHA BATES _________________ ELISHA BATES, while on a visit to the Holy Land, submitted to baptism in the River Jordan, and was taken to tsk for this lapse from the doctrine as promulgated by the father of the meeting; but he held to the ordinances of baptism as a saving means, on which subject he wrote a book. This he afterwards renounced and the copies in the hands of the Mt. Pleasant Friends were burned with ceremony; but he again recanted and in 1844 left the Friends to become a Methodist Episcopal minister, readopting the tenets he had set forth in the book, the copies of which had been burned at his request. He had followers in each of the several movements, and of coarse took with him into the Methodist communion a number of Friends. While addressing a large camp meeting near Mt. Pleasant in 1844, Bates was interrupted by persons he had offended by his various changes; boys even pelting him with buckeyes. He grew angry and declared that he had left the most tranquil church in the land and now found himself in the noisiest, extremes that he could not reconcile. He then left the Methodist Church. Return to Family Tales Return to Home Page