shire. While there he came under the influence of Methodism, and the increased fidelity and earnestness of liis ministry excited so much opposition that he abandoned the place and joined Wesley, whom he equalled, if he did not surpass, in itinerant ministerial labors. In 1784 Wesley consecrated him a bishop for the Methodists in America, and in the same year he presided at the organization of the Methodist Episco- pal Church at Baltimore, Md., and consecrated Francis Asbury a bishop. If we except some local consecra- tions in the Moravian settlements, Coke was the first Protestant bishop of the Western hemisphere. For many years he visited Ireland annually, and presided in its Conferences; he was repeatedly president of the English Conference ; he traversed England, Scotland, Wales, and America throughout his long life. He was especially the ** foreign minister" of Methodism. His stature was small, his voice feminine, but his soul was as vast as ever dwelt in a human frame. Though he became the first bishop of Methodism in the United States, he found not in a diocese coextensive with the new republic room for his energies. He was continu- ally contriving new measures for the extension of the Gospel. His plans, had he been a man of ordinary abilities, would have entitled him to the name of fi^ natic; but he was one of those rare spirits whose greatest conceptions and schemes are the legitimate products of their energies. He crossed the Atlantic eighteen tiroes at his owfa expense. To the end of his life he had charge of the Methodist missions through- out the world. He founded the negro missions of the West Indies, which have exerted an important influ- ence on the history of those islands, lliey included 17,000 members at the time of his death. He not only visited his missions, but spent almost the whole of his patrimonial fortune in their support, preached tor them, and begged for them from door to door. The mission- ary spirit was with him "as a burning fire shut up in his bones ;" and during his liie it was not deemed neces- sary to organiz^ a missionary society among the Wes- leyans, for he embodied that great interest in his own person. When a veteran of almost seventy years, he presented himself before the Wesleyan Conference as a missionary for the East Indies. The Conference ob- jected on account of the ex|>ense, but Coke ofl'ered to pay the charges of the outfit himself to the amount of $80,000, and so prevaOed over all otijections, and em- barked with a small band of laboferft. He died on the voyage in 1814, and was buried in the sea ; but the undertaking succeeded, and the Wesleyan East India missions are the result. It has been justly asserted that, except Wesley, no man was ever connected with the Methodist body who contributed more to extend the blessings of Christianity. His colleague in the episcopacy of the American Church would not allow of even this exception; "a minister of Christ," said Asbury, when the news of his death arrived — ** a min- ister of Christ, in zeal, in labors, and in services, the greatest man of the last century." Wesley used to say that Coke was a right hand to him. Withal he was a voluminous writer, publishing A Semum on EduectUony 177S; An Address to the InhabUantt qfBris- (o/, 1782 ; his ordination sermon at Baltimore, 1784 ; and many other sermons on the DivmUy of Christ, The Witness of the Spirit, and three funeral discourses on the deaths of Wesley, Rev. Mr. Richardson, and Hes- ter Ann Rogers; four sermons on the 0irislian Mwnis- try; A Discourse on the Seventh Chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, He also issued An Address to the So- cieties in England on the Settlement of the Chapels, 1795 ; An Address to the Weepers, on a pamphlet of William Hammet, of South Carolina ; Letters to the Societies, in reply to Rev. Melville Home, 1810 ; lAfe of Wesley, prepared jointly with Henry Moore ; History of the West Indus, in 8 vols. 1808 ; numerous reports and "Presses on the missionary cause ; Commentary on the ■ Scriptures, 6 vols. 4to, completed in 1807 ; and,
subsequently, Recent Oeeurrenoes of Europe ammdend •» Relation to such Prophecies as are now /idfiSat$ sr remain yet to befvffiUed; and the CoUagers* EMe, wiA reflections at the end of the chapters for £unfly read- ing. See London Review, Oct. 1860, art. iii; Drer, Itfe of Coke (New York, 1837); Etheridge, Life ofCdx (Lond. 1860) ; Sprague, Annals, vii, 130 ; Benson, L^< of Coke (N. Y. 8vo); Stevena, History of Mttkodim, vols, ii and iii passim, and Hist, of the JietJkodist Epis- copal Church, 4 vols, passim.
Co'la (XaiXa, V. r. KwU aad K^Xo), a fbs
named only in the Apocrypha (Judith xr, ^ In con- nection with Chobai (q. v.), as one of the citiei t» which Ozias sent orders to expel the enemies of tk Jews after the death of Holofemes. Simoms {Omam. N, T, p. 170) suggests Abel-mecAoAiiL Belaud, hov- ever (PalcBst, p. 729), thinks it may be the Culov (4. V.) inserted by the Sept. among the idties of Jadsb (Josh. XV, 60).
Colarbasians. See Colarbasus.
Colarbasns, the name of a Gnostic mentioned br Hippolytus {Elenchos, iv, 18; vi, 6, 55), Epiphanies (JETor. 85), Theodoretus (Heerel, fabuL i, 12), Tertallin ladv, Valmtin. 4, and in the appendix to the Prmscripts, c 60), and Augustine (de Har, c. 15), and whose trs- tem, according to these writers, was akin to that «f Valentinus, and still more to that of Marcos, represent- ing likewise the emanation of eons according to the order of the letters of the alphabet and of numbers. According to these writers, in the system of Colart»- sus, the first emanation (the "Ogdoas** of Valentnnis) did not signify eight different substances^ bat oah- eight different relations and efiects of the one God. which, according to their different significatioo, re- ceived different names. In the 83rBtem ascribed to Colarbasns, the awns woe not successively beguUea. but all simuHpeonsly brought into existence. To the \6rfOQ and the J^ioii a place was assigned hi tUt system after the dv^pMiroc and the iflcXjytria, an order difiMng ftt>m ttiat in the B3rBtem of Valentinos. Dr. Volkmar, in an essay entitled Die Kolarb€utt9~Gnosis Qm Niedner's ZeitsckriftfOr hist, TheoL 1855), nndeitog^ show that all the accounts of Colarbasos in the mlhu above mentioned can be traced to the description by Ire- nieus Q, 12, 8 sq.) of the system of the Gnostic Marcos aiid some modified systems ; that the wt)fd Cofaatases with Irensus (i, 14, 1) is nothing but the mystical des- ignation of the personified number Four (^S'n^ ^)c^ the highest ssons, the holy reTpaicrvc ; and that all the subsequent accounts arose fix>m an erroneous ooniiB- sion of the two statements. This view of Yolkinar has been adopted by most of the recent wiileis en Gnosticism.— Herzog, Real-Encyklop. viii, 19 (of wfakh our article is a fifee tmnslation); Wetxer iLWdte, Kirchen^Lex, ii, 691.