[Sidenote: Francis Asbury and the Methodists.] This foundation of a separate episcopacy west of the Atlantic was accompanied by the further separation of the Methodists as a distinct religious society. Although John Wesley regarded the notion of an apostolical succession as superstitious, he had made no attempt to separate his followers from the national church. He translated the titles of "bishop" and "priest" from Greek into Latin and English, calling them "superintendent" and "elder," but he did not deny the king's headship. Meanwhile during the long period of his preaching there had begun to grow up a Methodist church in America. George Whitefield had come over and preached in Georgia in 1737, and in Massachusetts in 1744, where he encountered much opposition on the part of the Puritan clergy. But the first Methodist church in America was founded in the city of New York in 1766. In 1772 Wesley sent over Francis Asbury, a man of shrewd sense and deep religious feeling, to act as his assistant and representative in this country. At that time there were not more than a thousand Methodists, with six preachers, and all these were in the middle and southern colonies; but within five years, largely owing to the zeal and eloquence of Asbury, these numbers had increased sevenfold. At the end of the war, seeing the American Methodists cut loose from the English establishment, Wesley in his own house at Bristol, with the aid of two presbyters, proceeded to ordain ministers enough to make a presbytery, and thereupon set apart Thomas Coke to be "superintendent" or bishop for America. On the same day of November, 1784, on which Seabury was consecrated by the non-jurors at Aberdeen, Coke began preaching and baptizing in Maryland, in rude chapels built of logs or under the shade of forest trees. On Christmas Eve a conference assembled at Baltimore, at which Asbury was chosen bishop by some sixty ministers present, and ordained by Coke, and the constitution of the Methodist church in America was organized. Among the poor white people of the southern states, and among the negroes, the new church rapidly obtained great sway; and at a somewhat later date it began to assume considerable proportions in the north. [Sidenote: Presbyterians; Roman Catholics.]