It was at this time that Bishop Provoost of New York laid down his functions, not expecting the church to continue much longer; and Bishop Madison of Virginia shared the despairing conviction of Chief-Justice Marshall that the church was too far gone ever to be revived.[232:1] Over all this period the historian of the Lutheran Church writes up the title "Deterioration."[232:2] Proposals were set on foot looking toward the merger of these two languishing denominations.
Even the Methodists, the fervor of whose zeal and vitality of whose organization had withstood what seemed severer tests, felt the benumbing influence of this unhappy age.

For three years ending in 1796 the total membership diminished at the rate of about four thousand a year.
Many witnesses agree in describing the moral and religious condition of the border States of Kentucky and Tennessee as peculiarly deplorable.
The autobiography of that famous pioneer preacher, Peter Cartwright, gives a lively picture of Kentucky society in 1793 as he remembered it in his old age: "Logan County, when my father moved into it, was called 'Rogues' Harbor.' Here many refugees from all parts of the Union fled to escape punishment or justice; for although there was law, yet it could not be executed, and it was a desperate state of society.

Murderers, horse-thieves, highway robbers, and counterfeiters fled there, until they combined and actually formed a majority.

Those who favored a better state of morals were called 'Regulators.' But they encountered fierce opposition from the 'Rogues,' and a battle was fought with guns, pistols, dirks, knives, and clubs, in which the 'Regulators' were defeated."[233:1] The people that walked in this gross darkness beheld a great light.

In 1796 a Presbyterian minister, James McGready, who for more than ten years had done useful service in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, assumed charge of several Presbyterian churches in that very Logan County which we know through the reminiscences of Peter Cartwright.