Chapter XXVI Last Days on Earth. 1784–1785.
FLETCHER took a profound interest, not only in Sunday Schools, which were being opened in various places, but in an institution which has long been the greatest of which the Methodists can boast. In 1783, Dr. Coke and a few of his friends drew up “A Plan of the Society for the Establishment of Missions among the Heathen.” This curious and most interesting document is too long to be inserted here. Suffice it to say, there is reason to believe that Fletcher was one of Coke’s counsellors. It has been already stated that, in the summer of 1783, the Doctor, on his way from Dublin, called at Madeley, and preached in Fletcher’s church. Soon after this, Fletcher and his wife went to Dublin; and now, at the beginning of the year 1784, Coke forwarded to Fletcher the aforesaid “Plan,” and a list of his missionary subscribers, twenty-six in number, seven of whom resided in Dublin. Is it chimerical to suppose that the formation of this Missionary Society was a subject of conversation between Coke and Fletcher, when the former was at Madeley, and that it was mainly through Fletcher’s influence that so many of its first subscribers were Dublin Methodists? It is a curious fact that neither of the Wesleys appeared in the list of contributors, the reason perhaps of which might be that they had not been consulted in drawing up the “Plan.” Fletcher, however, subscribed £2 2s. 0d. of the first year’s income, which amounted to £66 3s. 0d., and to him Coke sent the “Plan” and the report, and also the following letter appended:—
“Near Plymouth, January 6, 1784.
“My Very Dear Sir,—Lest Mr. Parker should neglect to send you one of our Plans for the establishing of foreign Missions, I take the liberty of doing it. Ten subscribers more, of two guineas per annum, have favoured me with their names. If you can get a few subscribers more, we shall be obliged to you.
“We have now a very wonderful outpouring of the Spirit in the West of Cornwall. I have been obliged to make a winter campaign of it, and preach here and there out of doors.
“I beg my affectionate respects to Mrs. Fletcher. I entreat you to pray for
“Your most affectionate Friend and Brother,
“Thomas Coke.”
At this period, Fletcher was engaged in the last of his literary works. The following, hitherto unpublished letter, may serve as an introduction to the essays Fletcher was now writing. It was addressed to the “Rev. Mr. Bouverot, Geneva;” and, though without date, was evidently written a few days before Fletcher’s memorable visit to Dublin:—
“The Society of Christian Philosophers, which you mention, seems, in this day, to be a useful Institution. The most redoubtable attacks upon religion come from our modern Sadducees, who say there is neither angel nor spirit; and the famous Dr. Priestly openly maintains that we have no soul, or, at least, that it is no other than the animal spirits. It may be, therefore, that God, who never leaves Himself without witnesses, has permitted this Society for the maintenance of a metaphysical doctrine so opposite to that of materialism. ‘Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.’
“A Swedish gentleman, called Baron Swedenborg,[600] published many pieces in England, and declared he had conversed with angels and spirits for more than forty years, and that with as much familiarity as with men. Some of his works have been translated into English. There is one, of which I have the original Latin by me, entitled, ‘Mirabilia Coeli et Inferni,’ and which I mean to send you as soon as I shall find a convenient opportunity. It is certain, if believers were more detached from earthly things, and more concentred in Christ by faith, they would converse with angels and with the spirits of the departed saints, as the Patriarchs and first Christians were accustomed to do. There would, indeed, in this, be some danger of following after piety, with a view to such an advantage, through a species of curiosity, which, if it ought not to be called the back door, yet would not deserve to be entitled the front, which consists in an humble faith disengaged from sense and from all self-seeking,” etc., etc.
“I have not yet had leisure to cast my eyes over mys’ Next week, at the invitation of many who love the Word of God, I mean to make a tour into Ireland, from whence I propose returning before winter. Mr. Wesley, who is eighty years of age, is now on a tour in the Low Countries, where he preaches, even at Amsterdam.
“Assist me to bless God, who has sustained me hitherto, and who is my light and my salvation in Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever! Remember me before God in your prayers, as I have a continual remembrance of you in mine.”
Fletcher’s bold speculation, respecting the possibility of conversing with angels and the spirits of departed saints, may be passed in silence. The reader’s attention must now be asked to the famous Dr. Priestley.
This remarkable man was born at Fieldhead, near Leeds, in 1733. While a student at the Dissenting Academy, kept by Dr. Ashworth, at Daventry, he became an Arian. His subsequent career need not here be traced. It is enough to say, that, about the year 1767, while he was the minister of a large congregation of Dissenters at Leeds, he embraced Socinianism; and that, about 1781, he wrote and published his “History of the Corruptions of Christianity,”—some of the teachings of which work Fletcher felt it his duty to refute. Dr. Priestley died at Philadelphia, in the United States of America, in 1804.
It has been already stated, that, early in the year 1785, Fletcher published a second and enlarged edition of his poem, entitled, “La Grace et la Nature.” At the end of that work, the following advertisement was inserted: “Prêt à être publié en Anglois: A Rational Vindication of the Catholic Faith, respecting the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: being the First Part of a Scriptural Vindication of Christ’s Divinity. Inscribed to the Rev. Dr. Priestley.”
The Rev. Joseph Benson, the quondam tutor of Lady Huntingdon’s Trevecca College, when Fletcher was its president, says this “Rational Vindication” was left by Fletcher “not quite finished;” which assertion seems to clash with Fletcher’s own advertisement just given. There can be no doubt it was as finished as Fletcher meant it to be; though not as complete as Mr. Benson thought it ought to be, and as he himself tried to make it. In addition to this, however, Fletcher began a second essay, entitled, “Socinianism Unscriptural; or, the Prophets and Apostles vindicated from the Charge of holding the Doctrine of Christ’s mere Humanity: being the Second Part of a Vindication of His Divinity. Inscribed to the Rev. Dr. Priestley.” The first of these was intended to be an answer to Priestley’s assertion that “the doctrine of the Trinity is irrational;” and the second to refute his equally unfounded dogma, that, the doctrine of Christ’s “divinity has no proper foundation in the Old Testament,—the prophets speaking of the Messiah only as a man like themselves;” nor in the “New Testament,—the Apostles never giving our Lord any higher title than that of a man approved of God.” In Mr. Benson’s opinion, both of the essays were left unfinished; and it is certain that neither of them was published in Fletcher’s lifetime. Rightly or wrongly, Mr. Benson—a very able theologian—undertook, after Fletcher’s death, to write supplements to both, and then published them; and these irrefutable productions of Mr. Benson’s pen have, ever since 1818, when he was the Methodist Connexional Editor, been improperly incorporated in Fletcher’s “Collected Works.” Mr. Benson’s additions to Fletcher’s essays are invaluable; but they ought, in fairness to both authors, to be published separately. On this subject, however, nothing more need be added. Fletcher’s replies to Priestley, which were printed a few years subsequent to his death,[601] were revised by Wesley, who writes, in his Journal:—
“1784, Saturday, March 27. I went to Madeley; and, at Mr. Fletcher’s desire, revised his letters to Dr. Priestley. I think there is hardly another man in England so fit to encounter him.—Sunday, 28. Notwithstanding the severe weather, the church was more than filled. I preached on part of the Epistle (Heb. ix. 13, etc.); in the afternoon, ons’ and I believe God applied it to many hearts.”
Never has there been a time when there was more need of essays like those of Fletcher than that which is now passing. Socinianism, in various shapes, even among many who think themselves orthodox, is rampant; and the Methodist Book Committee would render incalculable service to the cause of Christian truth, by publishing in a separate form, and at as cheap a price as possible, Fletcher’s two unanswerable replies to the redoubtable Dr. Priestley.
In his “Expostulatory Letter,” Fletcher writes:—
“While you invite archdeacons and bishops to defend their church and the divinity of their Saviour, may the voice of a poor country vicar be heard amidst the groans of the press which repeats your challenges? Will not your sense of honour feel too great a disappointment in seeing so mean a person step forth to present you with an expostulatory letter, and to break a spear with you, on the very ground where you think yourself invincible,—philosophy, reason, and common sense?
“Conscious of the variety of your learning, and the greatness of your reputation, I apologize for my boldness, by observing, that the Church is my mother; that the feeblest child has a right to cry out when his mother is stabbed to the heart; and that, when the Divine crown of our Lord is publicly struck at, the least of believers may show his astonishment at the antichristian deed.
“When the Socinians of the last century said that it was impossible to believe God and man were united in the person of our Lord, the Catholics replied, it was as easy to believe that God and man make one Christ, as to believe that the immortal soul and the mortal body are one man. And Dr. Sherlock added, that the best way for the Socinians to set aside this argument against the mystery of our Lord’s incarnation, was to deny the union of soul and body, because they could not understand it; and openly to maintain, that man is a body without a soul, a compound of mere matter.
“When that judicious divine dropped this hint, he little thought that some philosophers of our day would be so desperately bent upon divesting Christ of His Divine glory, that they would be content to die like dogs, without leaving any surviving part of themselves, so that they might win the day against the Catholic Church, and the divinity of our Lord.
“I am sorry to observe that you have the dangerous honour to be at the head of these bold philosophers. Dr. Berkeley was so singular as to deny the existence of matter. According to his doctrine, there is nothing but spirit in the world, and matter exists only in our ideas. As a rival of his singularity, you run into the opposite extreme; you annihilate our souls; you turn us into mere machines; we are nothing but matter; and if you allow us any spirit, it is only such as can be distilled like spirits of wine. Thus, if we believe you both, being ground not only to atoms but to absolute nonentity between the two millstones of your preposterous and contrary mistakes, we have neither form nor substance, neither body nor soul!
“Glad am I, Sir, that when you made so free with the souls of men you did not pass your philosophical sponge over the existence of the Father of spirits, the great Soul which gives life and motion to the universe. But, though you spare the Father’s dignity, you attack the Son’s divinity; you deny the sanctifying influences of the Holy Ghost; and, by hasty strides, you carry us back to a dwarf, mongrel Christianity, made up of materialism, Judaism, and the baptism of John.
“To gain this inglorious end, in yours’ you collect the capital errors invented by fallen Christians in the corrupt ages of Christianity; then, taking some of the most precious Gospel truths, you blend them with these errors, and rendering them all equally odious, you turn them promiscuously out of the Church as the ‘Corruptions of Christianity.’ Thus you cleanse the temple of truth as our Lord would have cleansed that of Jerusalem, if he had thrown down the tables of show-bread as well as the tables of the money changers, and if He had turned out the cherubim of glory as He did the beasts which defiled that holy place. In short, you treat our Lord’s divinity as the Jews treated His humanity when they numbered Him with felons, that the mob might cry with a show of piety, ‘Away with Him! Crucify Him!’ with the thieves, His accursed companions!”
On the mysterious and holy doctrine of the Trinity in unity, Fletcher writes:—
“That there is a Supreme, Infinite, and Eternal Mind by which the world was made, is evident from the works of creation and providence. Every leaf of the trees which cover a thousand hills, every spire of the grass which clothes a thousand vales, echoes, ‘There is a God.’ But the peculiar mode of His existence is far above our reach. Of this we only know what He plainly reveals to us, and what we may infer from what He hath plainly revealed; for sooner shall the vilest insect find out the nature of man, than the brightest man shall of himself discover the nature of God.
“It is agreed on all hands that the Supreme Being, compared with all other beings, is One,—one Creator over numberless creatures, one Infinite Being over myriads of finite beings, one Eternal Intelligence over millions of temporary intelligences. The distance between the things made and Him that made them being boundless, the living God must stand for ever far higher above all that lives, than the sun stands superior to all the beams it emits, and to all the tapers lighted at its fire. In this sense, true Christians are all Unitarians: God having plainly revealed His unity by the prophets, by the Apostles, and by our Lord Himself, there is no doubt about this point. And may the hand which writes these sheets wither a thousand times over rather than it should designedly write one word against this glorious and ever-adorable unity!
“But although the Supreme Being is One when He is compared to all created beings, shall we quarrel with Him when He informs us that notwithstanding he has no second in the universe of creatures, yet, in Himself, He exists in a wonderful manner, insomuch that His own eternal and perfect essence subsists, without division or separation, under three adorable distinctions, which are called sometimes ‘the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost;’ and sometimes ‘the Father, the Word, and the Spirit’? ‘Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, Why hast Thou made me thus?’ or, Why dost Thou exist after such a manner?”
Fletcher then proceeds to describe the different opponents of his doctrine; namely,—
“Tritheists, who so unscripturally distinguish the Divine Persons as to divide and separate them into three deities; and who, by this means, run into polytheism, or the belief of many gods. Ditheists, generally called Arians, who worship two gods, a great god and a little god; the former uncreate, the latter created; the former God by nature, and the latter only by courtesy. Deists, who so unscripturally maintain the unity of the Divine essence as to admit but one Divine subsistence;” and who include Jews, Mahometans, Infidels, and Socinians.
Fletcher next undertakes to show and prove that God the Father has a proper Son, by whom He made the world; that our Lord Jesus Christ claimed the divine honour of being this Son; that He is the Redeemer and Saviour of lost mankind; that He is to be the final and universal Judge; and that divine worship was paid to Him by patriarchs, prophets, and Apostles, and is His undoubted right.
Fletcher’s second pamphlet, entitled “Socinianism Unscriptural,” consists of eight letters, addressed to Dr. Priestley, in which he shows that Socinians err when they assert that the prophets always spoke of the Messiah as of a mere man like themselves. He proves that our first parents expected a Divine Messiah, and that the Divine Person who appeared to the patriarchs, and to Moses, was Jehovah, the Son, or Christ in His pre-existent state; that the foundation of the proofs of Christ’s divinity, in the writings of the prophets, is laid in the three original prophecies (Gen. iii. 15, xxii. 16, etc., and xlix. 8–10), recorded by Moses concerning the Messiah; that all the prophets bear witness to His Godhead, as do also the Evangelists and Apostles.
This is a meagre outline of Fletcher’s exceedingly able pamphlet, but nothing more can be here attempted. Two brief extracts, however, may be added, illustrative of his style:—
“I have proved that the king of Israel who brought his people out of Egypt was Christ, in His pre-existent nature. Moses was the prime minister of this great King; Joshua, the general of His armies; the tabernacle, His palace; the mercy-seat, His throne; the ark, His royal standard; the priests, His officers; the Levites, His guards; and the shekinah, the visible display of His presence.”
“Read, dear Sir, the Scriptures without the veil of your system, and you will see that the Messiah, the wonderful Person whom you so constantly endeavour to degrade, was to be a mediating Prophet, like Moses; an atoning Priest, like Aaron; a pacific King, like Solomon; a royal Prophet, like David; a kingly Priest, like Melchisedec; the Everlasting Father, as the Logos by whom all things were created; and the Mighty God, as the proper Son of Him with whom He shares, in the unity of the Divine Spirit, the supreme title of ‘Jehovah, Lord of hosts.’”
It has been already shown in a letter which Fletcher addressed to Wesley in 1755, the year of his conversion, that he was what is commonly called a Millenarian. Twenty-nine years had elapsed since then. During this long interval, no man had been a more diligent and devout student of the Holy Scriptures than himself, and yet his Millenarian belief remained unchanged. Hence the following remarkable passage in his “Socinianism Unscriptural.” After quoting and paraphrasing Isa. lxvi. 15–24, Fletcher proceeds to say:—
“Here ends Isaiah’s account of that glorious reign of Jehovah-Shiloh, which the fathers called the ‘Millennium,’ as being to last a thousand years, and during which it is probable our Lord will use these extraordinary means to keep all the nations in the way of obedience:—1. A constant display of His goodness over all the earth, but particularly in and about Jerusalem, where the Lord will manifest His glory, and bless His happy subjects with new manifestations of His presence every Lord’s day and every new moon. 2. A distinguishing interposition of Providence which will withhold the Messiah’s wonted blessings from the disobedient (Zech. xiv. 17). 3. The constant endeavours of the saints, martyrs, patriarchs, prophets, and Apostles, raised from the dead and conversing with men, as Moses and Elijah did with our Lord’s disciples upon the mount, where they were indulged with a view of His glorified person, and of His ‘kingdom come with power.’ These glorified high priests and kings, as ministers and lieutenants of the Messiah, will rule all churches and states with unerring wisdom and unwarped fidelity. 4. The care that the Lord Himself will take to set apart for the ministry, under His glorified saints, those who in every nation shall distinguish themselves by their virtue and piety. This seems to be the meaning of His own words: ‘And when they shall come out of all nations to My holy mountain, I will take of them for priests and Levites, saith the Lord,’ Isaiah lxvi. 20, 21. 5. A standing display of the ministration of condemnation, as appears from Isaiah lxvi. 24, and from other parallel Scriptures. 6. At the same time that the ministration of condemnation will powerfully work upon the fears of mankind to keep men in the way of duty, an occasional display of the ministration of righteous mercy will work upon their hopes. How will those hopes be fired when they shall ‘see the Lamb’ of God ‘standing on the Mount Sion, and with Him’ His ‘hundred and forty-four thousand’ worthies, ‘having His Father’s name,’ Divine Majesty, Irresistible Power, Ineffable Love, and Bliss Inexpressible, ‘written on their foreheads!’ (Rev. xiv). But, 7. What will peculiarly tend to keep men from lapsing into rebellion against God will be the long life of the godly, and the untimely death of those who shall offer to tread the paths of iniquity. The godly shall attain to the years of antediluvian patriarchs, and the wicked shall not live out half their days; they shall not live above a hundred years; or, to speak after our manner, they shall die in their childhood. This seems to be Isaiah’s meaning in Isaiah lxv. 17–25.”
Leaving it to others to advocate or to attack these interpretations of Scripture, the present writer will only add, that thus full of firm unwavering faith in the Divine majesty and glorious kingship of his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the devout and reverent Fletcher drew near to the mysterious spirit-world.
In harmony with all this, Fletcher wrote to his friend, Mr. Henry Brooke, of Dublin, as follows:—
“Madeley, April 27, 1784.
“My Dear Brother,—Mercy, peace, and perfect love attend you, and your dear partner, and the dear friends who live under your roof; and with whom I beg you may abide under the cross, till, with John, Mary, and Salome, you all can say, ‘We are crucified with Him, and the life we now live, we live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved us, and gave Himself for us.’
“With respect to the glory of the Lord, it is at hand; whatever false wisdom and unbelief may whisper to our hearts. It can be no farther off than the presence of Him, who fills all in all.
“With respect to what you say of the kingdom not coming with the outward pomp, which is observable by the men of the world, it is strictly true; but that there is an inward display of power and glory under Pentecostal Christianity is undeniable, both from our Lord’s promises to His imperfect disciples, and from their experiences after the kingdom of God was come to them with power. To wait in deep resignation, and with a constant attention to what the Lord will please to do or say concerning us and His Church; and to leave to Him the times and seasons, is what I am chiefly called to do; taking care to avoid falling into either speculation careless of action, or into the activity which is devoid of spirituality. I would not have a lamp without oil; and I could not have oil without a lamp, and a vessel to hold it in for myself, and to communicate it to others.
“Fare you all well in Christ! So prays
“John Fletcher.”[602]
On the day that Fletcher penned the foregoing, his wife wrote as follows to Mrs. Smyth, their hostess in Dublin. The letter, however, was signed, “John and Mary Fletcher,” and has not before been published. It furnishes a glimpse of the Madeley Methodists:—
“April 27, 1784.
“My Very Dear Madam,—If anything I said in my last was attended with a blessing, I give glory to my adorable Father. I am ready to wonder that He ever works by so poor a worm.
“I wish you had been with us yesterday morning, in our upper chamber, to hear the simple tales of our dear women. Do you remember a little woman, who sat in the window of the room when you met the class, and who expressed great desire for more of the life of God? It was she who lived on horse-beans so many weeks, while suckling twins, for fear of running into debt for bread. She has, since then, been greatly exercised by poverty, temptation, and illness; but, in all, her desire for the pure image of God seemed to rise above every other wish; and, about a fortnight ago, the Lord poured out upon her such an abundance of His Spirit, that nature almost sank beneath it. She told us yesterday, that every moment she seems to be so surrounded with God, and so penetrated with His love, that, said she, ‘I cannot help, many times in the day, stopping in the midst of my work, when alone, to shout aloud, Glory! Glory! Glory! My very heart is glad. Yes, my heart is so glad, I could shout from morning till night; but, oh! I can think of no words to tell what I see and feel of Jesus. I can choose nothing: I know no will—no choice: the will of God is my all.’ Had you heard her speak, and also two others who have just found the Lord, you would have wept tears of love and joy.
“Our love to Dr. Coke; and thank him for his two letters, which we have received.
“Begging our tender regards to all our dear Christian friends, we remain, with kindest remembrance and grateful acknowledgment to our dear Mr. and Mrs. Smyth, their sincere though unworthy friends,
“John and Mary Fletcher.”
The next is a letter which, I believe, has not before been published. It was addressed to a sister of Lady Mary Fitzgerald, and is full of faith in Christ:—
“Christ Jesus is alone the desirable, the everlasting distinction and honour of men. All other advantages are like the down on the thistle, blown away in a moment. Riches are incapable of satisfying; friends are changeable; dear relations are taken away with a stroke; but, amid all the changes of life, Christ is a Rock. To see Him by faith, to lay hold on Him, to rely on Him, to live upon Him, this—this is the refuge from the storm, the shadow from the heat.
“In order that you may obtain it, nothing more or less is required, on your part, than a full and frequent confession of your own abominable heart; and kneeling, as a true beggar, at the door of mercy, declaring you come there only expecting notice and relief because God our Saviour came to redeem incarnate devils and to convert them into saints.
“I think you take a sure method to perplex yourself if you look at yourself for proof of faith. Others must see it in your works; but you must feel it in your heart. The glory of Jesus is, by faith, realized to the mind in some such manner as an infinitely grand and beauteous object in the firmament of heaven arrests the spectator on itself. It captivates him; and, by the pleasure it imparts, he is led on to view it. So it is with Jesus, our peace, strength, righteousness, salvation.
“For my own part, I am often tempted to suspect whether I am not speaking great swelling words of Christ, and yet am myself nothing more than sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal; and I find that the only successful way of answering this doubt is an immediate address to Jesus Christ, and prayer to Him, to this effect: ‘Whosoever cometh unto Thee, Thou wilt in no wise cast out. Lord, have I not come unto Thee? Am I not depending on Thee for life, as a brand plucked out of the fire? See if there be any way of wickedness in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!’
“My eyes look to the blessed Jesus; my heart longs to be more in His service; I mourn my corruptions; they are many and great. When I look at Him, and contemplate His finished salvation, I admire, I adore, in some measure I love. When I look at myself, my heart rises at the sight,—black and selfish, proud and carnal, covetous and unclean. I want all things that are good; but, oh! I have a blessed Lord Christ, in whom all fulness dwells for me, and for my dear friend to whom I am writing,—a fulness of pardon, wisdom, holiness, strength, peace, salvation, righteousness,—a fulness of mercy, goodness, truth,—all this, and ten thousand times more, without condition, without qualification, without workings, without servings, only for receiving. O blessed free grace of God! What a gift! And for whom? My dear friend, for you. What says the everlasting God? ‘Believe He gave His Son for sinners.’ Can God lie? Impossible! Can we have a better foundation to build upon than the promise and the oath of God?
“My very dear friend, I know you will not be angry at my preachment. I aim all I say at my own heart. I stand more in need of it than you; and I always feel my heart refreshed when I am talking or thinking of the blessed Jesus. But oh! how little I know of Him! O Thou light of the world, enlighten me! Teach me to know more of Thy infinite, unsearchable riches, that I may love Thee with an increasing love, and serve Thee with an increasing zeal till Thou bring me to glory!”
Gratitude was one of Fletcher’s characteristics. Hence, when the son of his dead friend, Mr. Charles Greenwood, of Stoke Newington, visited him at Madeley, he wrote to the loving widow:—
“Madeley, June 20, 1784. The sight of Mr. Greenwood, in his son, has brought some of my Newington scenes to my remembrance, and I beg leave to convey my tribute of thanks by his hands. Thanks! Thanks! What, nothing but words? There is my humbling case. I wish to requite your manifold kindnesses, but I cannot. I must be satisfied to be ever your insolvent debtor. Nature and grace do not love it. Proud nature lies uneasy under great obligations; and thankful grace would be glad to put something in the scale opposite to that which you have filled with so many favours. But what shall I put? I wish I could send you all the Bank of England, and all the Gospel of Christ; but the first is not mine, and the second is already yours.”[603]
Wesley’s annual Conference, in 1784, was held at Leeds. He writes, in his Journal:—
“1784, Tuesday, July 27. Our Conference began; at which four of our brethren, after long debate (in which Mr. Fletcher[604] took much pains), acknowledged their fault, and all that was past was forgotten. Thursday, July 29, being the public Thanksgiving Day, as there was not room for us in the old church, I read prayers, as well as preached, at our Room. I admired the whole service for the day. The prayers, Scriptures, and every part of it, pointed at one thing: ‘Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.’ Having five clergymen to assist me, we administered the Lord’s Supper, as was supposed, to sixteen or seventeen hundred persons. Sunday, August 1. We were fifteen clergymen at the old church. Tuesday, August 3. Our Conference concluded in much love, to the great disappointment of all.”
Such is Wesley’s brief account of one of the most important Conferences he ever held, and the last which Fletcher had the opportunity of attending. During the year, Dr. Coke had begun the Methodist Foreign Missionary Society; and Wesley had signed and sealed his famous “Deed of Declaration,” constituting, for all time to come, the Legal Conference of the Methodists, and defining the powers and duties of its members. Charles Atmore, who was present, relates,[605] that, on the Sunday evening before the Conference opened, the congregation, assembled to hear Wesley, was four times greater than the chapel could contain, and, therefore, Wesley “preached in a field adjoining, on the judgment of the great day.” On Monday morning, Fletcher “preached an excellent sermon from Matt. v. 13–16, ‘Ye are the salt of the earth,’” etc. At night, Wesley took for his text, “Give the king Thy judgments, O God, and Thy righteousness unto the king’s son.” On Tuesday morning, at five o’clock, Henry Moore delivered a sermon founded upon “Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you.” At the conclusion of the service, Wesley “opened the Conference;” and, in the evening of the day, preached from, “Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered,” etc. Next morning, July 28, at five o’clock, the text of Thomas Taylor was, “What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.” At night, Wesley preached from, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” Thursday, July 29, “was a high day indeed.” At five a.m. Thomas Hanby discoursed on “My grace is sufficient for thee,” etc. In the forenoon, Wesley expounded and enforced 1 Cor. xiii. 1–4, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity,” etc. Then followed the sacramental service, in which Wesley was assisted by Fletcher, Coke, Cornelius Bayley, who had been Fletcher’s curate, Mr. Dillon, an ordained clergyman from Ireland, and the well-known David Simpson, of Macclesfield, the services of the day being concluded with another sermon from Wesley, on the text, “This is the first and great commandment.” At five a.m. on Friday, July 30, Joseph Pilmoor preached from “I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved”moved”; and, at night, Fletcher, from, “These all having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.”[606] At seven o’clock on Sunday morning, August 1, Fletcher preached again, taking as his text 1 Kings xiii. 26, selected from the first lesson for the day: “It is the man of God, who was disobedient unto the word of the Lord: therefore the Lord hath delivered him unto the lion, which hath torn him, and slain him, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake unto him.” Joseph Benson, who was present, writes:—
“Mr. Fletcher drew such a picture of the degradation and misery of a backsliding minister, and of the corruption and injury he introduced into the Church of Christ, as produced a general and deep sensation, not easily to be forgotten.”
And Henry Moore, another of Fletcher’s auditors, remarks:—
“I was extremely impressed with the whole service: the shadow of the Divine presence was seen among us, and His going forth was in our sanctuary.”
Next morning, Mr. Moore himself had to preach. He writes:—
“I went to the chapel at the hour appointed, and, to my dismay, found the venerable Mr. Fletcher in the pulpit, leaning upon his staff. My first impression was to run away; but a moment’s reflection changed my purpose. I ascended the pulpit and gave out the hymn; while I did so, my knees smote one against the other: I knelt down to pray, and indeed lifted my heart with my voice, that I might be endued with power and wisdom from on high: my soul was calmed, and I took my text, and continued the service, fully set free from fear, and strengthened in my resolution ever to obey the voice of duty.”[607]
At five o’clock on the following morning, Wesley, eighty-one years of age, again preached, selecting a text admirably adapted to be a sequel to that chosen by Fletcher on the previous Sunday; and also peculiarly suited to what had taken place in the Conference: “And Jeremiah said unto the house of the Rechabites, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Because ye have obeyed the commandment of Jonadab your father, and kept all his precepts, and done according unto all that he hath commanded you; therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me for ever” (Jer. xxxv. 18, 19). The Conference was concluded on Tuesday, August 3; and next morning, at five o’clock, Wesley delivered another sermon, and immediately afterwards took the coach for Wales. His last text, at this remarkable Conference, was, “Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.”[608]
A purpose is intended to be served by these minute statements, namely, to convey an idea of what Methodist Conferences were in the olden times, and to indicate the chief preachers, and the kind of texts they took.
It is a well-known fact that the great event of the Conference of 1784 was the rebellion raised in Wesley’s camp of preachers. In his “Deed of Declaration,” he had appointed his brother Charles, Dr. Coke, James Creighton, and ninety-seven of his itinerants to be, after his decease, his legalized successors, and to exercise the powers he had exercised from the beginning. By confining the number of the members of the legal Conference to a hundred, he necessarily excluded not fewer than ninety-two, whom he had employed in circuit work; and, among these, there were several who had claims quite equal to many of the elected ones, as, to wit, Thomas Lee, John Atlay, John Pritchard, John Pool, John Hampson, sen., John Hampson, jun., William Eells, and Joseph Pillmoor. Previous to the Conference being held, certain of the non-elected preachers published a protest against Wesley’s partiality. The crisis was a serious one. Fletcher was not included in the hundred, probably because he desired to be left out; but he was intensely anxious respecting apprehended results. Mrs. Fletcher wrote:—
“O how deeply was he affected for the welfare of his brethren, when we were at Leeds, in the year 1784! When disputes arose among them, his soul groaned beneath the burden. By two or three o’clock in the morning, I was sure to hear him breathing out prayers for the peace and prosperity of Sion; and when I said to him, I was afraid this would hurt his health, and that I wished him to sleep more, he would answer, ‘O Polly, the cause of God lies near my heart.’”
At the opening of the Conference, on July 27, Wesley mentioned the “Deed of Declaration,” and the “Appeal” which had been published against it:—
“He showed that, from the commencement of Methodism, the annual Conferences had always consisted of persons whom he had desired to meet for the purpose of conferring with him. He insisted, that he had a right to name the members of the Legal Conference, and to fix their number. The ‘Appeal,’” he said, “represented him as unjust, oppressive, and tyrannical, which he was not; the authors of it had betrayed him; and, by doing so, had hurt the minds of many, and kindled a flame throughout the kingdom. Hence, he required that they should acknowledge their fault, and be sorry for it, or he could have no further connection with them.”[609]
For seven days, the dispute remained unsettled. Fletcher acted as mediator.
“Never,” says Charles Atmore, “shall I forget the ardour and earnestness with which Mr. Fletcher expostulated, even on his knees, both with Mr. Wesley and the preachers. To the former, he said, ‘My father! my father! they have offended, but they are your children!’ To the latterlatter, he exclaimed, ‘My brethren! my brethren! he is your father!’ and then, portraying the work in which they were unitedly engaged, he fell again on his knees, and with fervour and devotion engaged in prayer. The Conference was bathed in tears; many sobbed aloud.”[610]
This appears to have been on the last day but one that the Conference sat. Hence Joseph Benson writes:—
“August 2. Our brethren, who had been concerned in the ‘Appeal,’ rejoiced our hearts, by acknowledging their fault, and making submission. In consequence of their doing so, they were admitted among their brethren, and appointed to Circuits.”[611]
It may be added, that, the principal appellants—John Hampson, sen., and John Hampson, jun., Joseph Pillmoor, John Atlay, and William EellsEells—soon afterwards left the Connexion.
Two other incidents, concerning the Conference, must be mentioned.
It is a well-known fact, that, one of the most important questions asked at Wesley’s Conferences was, “Are there any objections to any of our preachers?” Upon the question being put, the names of all (Wesley’s name included), were read seriatim. When this part of the business of the Conference, in 1784, was reached, Fletcher rose from his seat, to withdraw from the chapel.
“He was eagerly recalled, and asked why he would leave them? ‘Because,’ said he, ‘it is improper, and painful to my feelings, for me to hear the minute failings of my brethren canvassed, unless my own character be submitted to the same scrutiny.’ They promised, if he would stay, that his character should be investigated. On these terms, he consented to remain; and, when his name was read, an aged preacher rose, bowed to him, and said, ‘I have but one thing to object to Mr. Fletcher; God has given him a richer talent than his humility will suffer him duly to appreciate. In confining himself to Madeley, he puts his light, comparatively, under a bushel; whereas, if he would come out more among us, he would draw immense congregations, and would do much more good.’ In answer to this, Mr. Fletcher stated the tender and sacred ties which bound him to his parish; its numerous population; the daily calls for his services; the difficulty of finding a proper substitute; his increasing infirmities, which disqualified him for horse exercise; his unwillingness to leave Mrs. Fletcher at home; and the expense of travelling in carriages. In reply to his last argument, another preacher arose, and observed that the expense of his journeys would be cheerfully paid; and that, though he knew and highly approved Mr. Fletcher’s disinterestedness and delicacy in pecuniary transactions, yet he feared there was a mixture of pride in his objection; for that by no importunity could he be prevailed on to accept a present to defray his expenses on his late visit to Ireland. ‘A little explanation,’ replied Mr. Fletcher, ‘will set that matter right. When I was invited to visit my friends at Dublin, I had every desire to accept their invitation; but I wanted money for the journey, and knew not how to obtain it. In this situation, I laid the matter before the Lord, humbly requesting that, if the journey were a providential opening to do good, I might have the means of performing it. Shortly afterwards, I received an unexpected sum of money, and took my journey. While in Dublin, I heard our friends commiserating the distresses of the poor, and lamenting the inadequate means they had to relieve them. When, therefore, they offered me a handsome present, what could I do? The necessary expenses of my journey had already been supplied; my general income was quite sufficient; I needed nothing. Had I received the money, I should have given it away. The poor of Dublin most needed, and were most worthy of, the money of their generous countrymen. How then could I hesitate to beg that it might be applied to their relief? You see, brethren, I could not in conscience do otherwise than I did.’”[612]
After these explanations, the honest old Methodist preachers, of course, recorded no objection to the “character” of John Fletcher; but Wesley, nearly a year afterwards, wrote to his brother Charles:—
“1785, June 2. About once a quarter, I hear from Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher. I grudge his sitting still; but who can help it? I love ease as well as he does; but I dare not take it while I believe there is another world.”[613]
Fletcher’s examination, on this occasion, took place by special arrangement: if he had lived, perhaps, it would afterwards have been a matter of course; for, about the middle of the Conference, he rose, and, addressing Wesley, said:—
“I fear my successor will not be interested in the work of God, and my flock may suffer. I have done what I could. I have built a chapel in Madeley Wood, and I hope, Sir, you will continue to supply it, and that Madeley may still be part of a Methodist Circuit. If you please, I should be glad to be put down in the ‘Minutes’ as a supernumerary.”
Wesley was not easily moved, but even he could hardly bear this, and the preachers burst into tears.[614]
The other incident, to be mentioned, was of a different kind, and is a good illustration of the remarkable allegorical talent which Fletcher possessed, and often exercised, not only in his published works, but in his correspondence, and in conversation among his friends.
On March 31, 1784, Wesley visited Burslem, where Mr. Enoch Wood resided, a Methodist, and an artist of great ability. Mr. Wood prevailed on Wesley to permit him to model a bust from his person; and a considerable number of copies were executed. The likeness was so striking, that, when Wesley looked at the bust, he said to Mr. Wood, “If you touch it again, you will mar it.” Every wrinkle, dimple, and vein of the face and forehead were marked with perfect accuracy. Four months afterwards, Mr. Wood went to the Conference at Leeds, and soon became one of the most popular men there. Samuel Bardsley hoisted the artist on his shoulder; at the moment, Fletcher was passing through the grave-yard, and was told, by the applauding preachers, the name of the hero, so ludicrously exhibited. Fletcher paused a moment, and then said, “Are you the young man who made that beautiful likeness of Mr. Wesley?” Being answered in the affirmative, and having been made acquainted with the whole process of making the bust, he stood on a grave, and, putting his hand on the artist’s shoulder, he began to spiritualize what he had heard, by using it to illustrate the work of God, in the new creation of the human soul, by the power of the Holy Ghost. He spoke of the rough and unpromising materials,—the corrupt nature derived from fallen Adam; he showed how this, by the energy of the Holy Spirit, is softened and melted down into godly sorrow; how it becomes plastic in the hands of the Divine Artist; how it is cast into a new mould: and how it is formed after the likeness of Christ. His extemporaneous address lasted twenty minutes, and was never forgotten by those who heard it.[615]
It may be added that, some years afterwards, Dr. Adam Clarke obtained from Mr. Wood the loan of the original mould, and had a bust cast in solid brass, which is now in the possession of Mr. G. J. Stevenson. This was lent to the sculptor who chiselled the marble effigy of Wesley, now placed in the entrance-hall of the Wesleyan Theological Institution, Richmond. The face and head of the effigy were obtained from it.[616]
On his return to Madeley, Fletcher wrote to his friend, Mr. Ireland, as follows:—
“Madeley, September 13, 1784.
“My Dear Friend,—I keep in my sentry-box till Providence removes me. My situation is quite suited to my little strength. I may do as much or as little as I please, according to my weakness; and I have an advantage, which I can have nowhere else in such a degree,—my little field of action is just at my own door, so that if I happen to overdo myself, I have but to step from my pulpit to my bed, and from my bed to my grave. If I had a body full of vigour, and a purse full of money, I should like well enough to travel about as Mr. Wesley does; but as Providence does not call me to it, I readily submit. The snail does best in its shell; were it to aim at galloping, like the racehorse, it would be ridiculous indeed. My wife is quite of my mind with respect to the call we have to a sedentary life. We are two poor invalids, who between us make half a labourer.
“We shall have tea cheap and light very dear;[617] I don’t admire the change. Twenty thousand chambers walled up, and filled with foul air, are converted into so many dungeons for the industrious artizan, who, being compelled by this murderous tax, denies himself the benefit of light and air. Blessed be God! the light of heaven and the air of the spiritual world are still free.
“My dear partner sweetly helps me to drink the dregs of life, and to carry with ease the daily cross. We are not long for this world—we see it, we feel it; and, by looking at death and his conqueror, we fight beforehand our last battle with that last enemy whom our dear Lord has overcome for us. That we may triumph over him with an humble, Christian courage is the prayer of, my dear friend, yours,
“John Fletcher.”[618]
Fletcher’s apprehension of the nearness of death, so far as he was concerned, was realized; but his wife did not die until thirty-one years after this, not a year of which passed without her keeping the anniversary of their wedding-day. In the present year she wrote:—
“1784, November 12. We have been married three years this day. A good day it has been to me! While reflecting on the wonderful goodness of God in my providential union with my dear husband (so far, so very far, beyond my warmest wishes), my heart was enlarged with desire to render to my God a suitable return for all His mercies!”[619]
On her birthday, two months previously, she had written in her journal:—
“September 12. This day I am forty-five years old. I have had such a sense of the goodness of God toward me as I cannot express. I am filled with favours. I have the best of husbands, who daily grows more and more spiritual, and I think more healthful, being far better than when we first married. My call also is so clear, and I have such liberty in the work, and such sweet encouragement among the people. My servant, too, is much improved, and as faithful as if she were my own child. An income quite comfortable, and a good deal to help the poor with! O what shall I render to the Lord for all the mercies He hath shown unto me!”
In this happy home, Fletcher wrote the following happy letter to a youth, his godson, by name John Fennel:—
“Madeley, November 28, 1784.
“Dear John,—I rejoice to hear that you think of a better world; and of that better part which Mary, and your mother—another Mary—chose before you. May all her prayers, and, above all, may the dew of heaven, come down upon your soul in solemn thoughts, heavenly desires, and strong resolutions to be the Lord’s, cost what it will. Let the language of your heart and lips be, ‘I will be a follower of Christ, a child of God, an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.’ A noble promise this! of which I have so peculiar a right to put you in mind. In order to be this happy and holy soul, you must not forget that your Christian name, your Christian vow, and ten thousand reasons beside, bind you to turn your back upon the world, the flesh, and the devil; and to set yourself to look steadfastly to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, your Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.
“Dear John, you have no time to lose. We have calls here to the young without end. I lately buried, in our churchyard, two brothers and sisters in the same grave. Be you also ready! I was praying for you some nights ago on my bed, in my sleepless hours; and I asked for you the faith of righteous Abel, the chastity of Joseph, the early piety of Samuel, the right choice of young Solomon, the self-denial and abstinence of Daniel, together with the early zeal and undaunted courage of his three friends; but, above all, I asked that you might follow John the Baptist and John the Apostle as they followed our Lord. Back, earnestly back my prayers. So shall you be faithful, diligent, godly; a blessing to all around you, and a comfort to your affectionate old friend and minister,
“John Fletcher.”[620]
At this period, the Rev. Charles Simeon, a young man of twenty-five, and full of faith and zeal, was rising into great popularity among the Methodist clergymen of the day. He was an intimate friend of Berridge and of Henry Venn; and had recently visited Riland at Birmingham, Cadogan at Reading, Pentycross at Wallingford, and Robinson at Leicester;[621] and now, toward the end of 1784, he came to Fletcher at Madeley. As soon as he entered the vicarage, Fletcher took him by the hand and brought him into the parlour, where the two engaged in prayer. That being ended, Fletcher asked Simeon to preach in the church. After some hesitation, Simeon consented; and away went Fletcher, bell in hand, through the village, and, ringing as loudly as he could, told the people they must attend church, for a young clergyman from Cambridge had come to preach to them.
After the service in the church, Fletcher and his visitor went for a walk, in the course of which they entered the ironworks. Simeon was surprised at the aptitude of Fletcher to turn everything he saw to spiritual profit. To one of the ironworkers, hammering on an anvil, he remarked, “O, pray to God that He may hammer that hard heart of yours.” To another, who was heating a bar of iron, “Ah! thus it is that God tries His children in the furnace of affliction.” And to a third, who was drawing a furnace, “See, Thomas! if you can make such a furnace as that, think what a furnace God can make for sinners.”[622]
Soon after this, Wesley wrote:—
“1784, Monday, December 20. I went to Hinxworth, where I had the satisfaction of meeting Mr. Simeon, Fellow of King’s College in Cambridge. He has spent some time with Mr. Fletcher, at Madeley: two kindred souls; much resembling each other both in fervour of spirit and in the earnestness of their address. He gave me the pleasing information that there are three parishes in Cambridge wherein true Scriptural religion is preached, and several young gentlemen who are happy partakers of it.”[623]
Fletcher, the Madeley revivalist, was closing his last year on earth; Simeon, the Cambridge one, lived and laboured for more than half a century afterwards; and who can say that in Simeon’s life and labours the influence of Fletcher’s spirit and example was not an element?
A few more extracts from Fletcher’s letters, and then the end will come. Already he seemed to be waiting to “gather up his feet,” and die. In a letter to Mrs. Thornton, a friend of the Greenwood family, at Stoke Newington, he wrote:—
“Madeley, January 21, 1785. I make just shift to fill up my little sentry box, by the help of my dear partner. Had we more strength, we should have opportunity enough to exert it. O that we were but truly faithful in our little place! Your great stage of London is too high for people of little ability and little strength; and, therefore, we are afraid of venturing upon it. We should be glad to rise high in usefulness; but God, who needs us not, calls us to sink in deep resignation and humility. His will be done!”[624]
Three weeks later, he wrote to the Right Hon. Lady Mary Fitzgerald, as follows:—
“Madeley, February 11, 1785. Who are we, my lady, that we should not be swallowed up by the holy, loving, living Spirit, who fills heaven and earth? Whether we consider it or not, there He is, a true, holy, loving, merciful God. Assent to it, my lady, believe it; rejoice in it. Let Him be God, all in all; your God in Christ Jesus. What an ocean of love to swim in—to dive into!”[625]
From Fletcher’s letter to Wesley in 1755, and his “Socinianism Unscriptural,” written during the last years of his life, it is undeniably evident that Fletcher was a Millenarian. The following letter, to Mr. Henry Brooke, of Dublin, refers to the same subject, but shows that he was not so confident with respect to some of his views as he had been heretofore—
“Madeley, February 28, 1785.[626]
“My Dear Brother,—We are all shadows. Your mortal parent has passed away; and we must pass away after him. A lesson I learn daily, is to see things and persons in their invisible root, and in their eternal principle; where they are not subject to change, decay, and death; but where they blossom and shine in the primæval excellence allotted them by their gracious Creator. By this means, I learn to walk by faith, and not by sight. Tracing His image, in all the footsteps of nature, and finding out that which is of God in ourselves, is the true wisdom, genuine godliness. I hope you will never be afraid, nor ashamed of it. I see no danger in these studies and meditations, provided we still keep the end in view—the all of God, and the shadowy nothingness of all that is visible.
“With respect to the great Pentecostal display of the Spirit’s glory, I still look for it within and without; and to look for it aright is the lesson I am learning. I am now led to be afraid of that in my nature, which would be for pomp, show, and visible glory. I am afraid of falling, by such an expectation, into what I call a spiritual Judaizing; into a looking for Christ’s coming in my own pompous conceit, which might make me reject Him, if His wisdom, to crucify mine, chose to come in a meaner way: if, instead of coming in His Father’s glory, He chose to come meek, riding, not on the cherubim, but on the foal of an ass. Our Saviour said, with respect to His going to the feast, ‘My time is not yet come:’ whether His time to come and turn the thieves and buyers out of the outward church is yet come, I know not. I doubt Jerusalem, and the holy place, are yet given to be trodden under foot by the Gentiles. But my Jerusalem! why it is not swallowed up of that which comes down from heaven, is a question which I wait to be solved by the teaching of the great Prophet, who is alone possessed of Urim and Thummim. The mighty power to wrestle with Him is all divine: and I often pray,—
“‘That mighty faith on me bestow,
Which cannot ask in vain,
Which holds and will not let Thee go,
Till I my suit obtain:
“‘Till Thou into my soul inspire
That perfect love unknown,
And tell my infinite desire,
Whate’er Thou wilt be done.’
“In short, the Lord crucifies my wisdom and my will every way; but I must be crucified as the thieves. All my bones must be broken; for there is still in me that impatience of wisdom, which would stir, when the tempter says, ‘Come down from the cross.’ It is not for us to know the times and seasons, the manner and mystical means of God’s working; but only to hunger and thirst, and lie passive before the great Potter. I begin to be content to be a vessel of clay or of wood, so that I may be emptied of self, and filled with my God, my all.
“I am exceeding glad that your dear partner goes on simply and believingly. Such a companion is a great blessing; for when two shall agree touching one thing in prayer, it shall be done. My wife and I endeavour to fathom the meaning of that deep promise. Join us, and let us search after that which exceeds knowledge—I mean the wisdom, and the power, the love, and the faithfulness of God.
“Adieu! Be God’s, as the French say, and see God is yours in Christ, for you,[627] for brothers Dugdale, Shannon, Pickering, Mrs. Blashford, etc.
“We are your obliged friends,
“John and Mary Fletcher.”[628]
It must be confessed that there is a little mysticism in Fletcher’s letter; but let it pass. The next was written a month later. The Rev. Peard Dickenson was now in the twenty-sixth year of his age. He had been ordained a deacon, on June 16, 1783, and, a few months afterwards, had been ordained a priest by the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was now the Curate of the venerable Vicar of Shoreham, the Rev. Vincent Perronet, and wrote to Fletcher, asking his advice respecting pastoral visitation. Fletcher replied, as follows:—
“Madeley, March 29, 1785.
“Dear Sir,—I did not answer your obliging letter, because I thought it would be presumption in me to advise you, when you have my reverend father, Mr. Perronet, to advise with. To send a line, in those circumstances, appeared to me like ‘sending coals to Newcastle.’
“However, having now an opportunity to forward a letter to London, I shall say what I have thought on the subject. It is exceeding well to visit from house to house, even the Infidels, to feel their pulse, and to see whether they do not begin to entertain more favourable thoughts of ‘the pearl of great price’ than grunting ‘swine’ or snarling ‘dogs’ generally do. Such visits, half upon the footing of Christian love, and half upon the footing of human civility, may tend to remove prejudices. In some cases, writing a letter with tenderness, or giving a little tract suited to the circumstances of the person, may clear our own conscience, though it should do him no good.
“My love, respects, and duty, to your venerable Vicar, who, I am told, is now your grandfather.[629] I hope the report is well grounded; and, if it is, I wish you joy on entering into so respectable a family; and I wish you and your partner all the help and comfort I find in mine; who, as well as myself, desires to be kindly remembered to all the dear family at Shoreham.
“I am, dear Sir, your affectionate brother and servant in Christ,
“John Fletcher.”[630]
The Rev. Melville Horne was one of Fletcher’s protegees. At Wesley’s Conference, in 1784, he had been “admitted on trial,” as a Methodist Itinerant Preacher, and appointed to the Liverpool circuit. It is well known that, after this, he obtained episcopal ordination, became curate at Madeley, published a collection of Fletcher’s letters in 1791, went as a missionary to Western Africa, and, on his return to England, rose to considerable distinction. Fletcher had lent the young itinerant certain books, and now wrote to him the following letter, which refers to a practice which must have been of recent adoption. Romaine made it a rule to read nothing but the Bible; wisely or unwisely, Fletcher had begun, to some extent, to copy his example:—
“Madeley, May 10, 1785.
“Dear Brother,—I am sorry you should have been uneasy about the books. I received them safely, after they had lain for some days at Salop. I seldom look into any book but my Bible; not out of contempt, as if I thought they cannot teach me what I do not know; but because, ‘Vita brevis, ars longa,’ I may never look into them again.
“Go on improving yourself by reading, but above all by meditation and prayer: and allow our Lord to refine you in the fire of temptation. Where you see a want, at home or abroad, within or without, look upon that want as a warning to avoid the cause of the leanness you perceive, and a call to secure the blessings which are ready to take their flight; for sometimes ‘the true riches,’ like those of this world, make themselves wings and flee away. The heavenly dove may be grieved, and take its flight to humbler and more peaceful roofs. I am glad you do not want hard or violent measures: I hope you will never countenance them, no, not against what you dislike. I believe things will turn out very well at the Conference, and I shall be a witness of it, if the Lord gives me a commission to be a spectator of the order and quietness of those who shall be there. If not, I shall help you by prayer to draw the blessing of love upon our friends.[631]
“In being moderate, humble, and truly desirous to be a Christian,—that is, to be the least, the last, and the servant of all, we avoid running ourselves into difficulties; we escape many temptations, and many mortifying disappointments. For my part, as I expect nothing from men, they cannot disappoint me; and, as I expect all good things from God, in the time, way, measure, and manner it pleaseth Him to bestow, here I cannot be disappointed; because He does, and will do, all things well.
“I trust you labour for God and souls, not for praise and self. When the latter are our aim, God, in mercy, blesses us with barrenness, that we may give up Barabbas, and release the humble Jesus, whom we crucify afresh by setting the thief on the throne, and the Lord of glory as our footstool: for so do those who preach Christ out of contention, or that they may have the praise of men.
“That God may bless you and your labours is the prayer of your old brother,
“John Fletcher.”[632]
A capital letter for a young Methodist preacher, like Melville Horne, who, six years afterwards, published it for the benefit of all Methodist probationers.
At this time, fever was raging at Madeley. Mr. W. Bosanquet, in an unpublished letter, addressed to his sister, Mrs. Fletcher, and dated “Bishopsgate Street, May 16, 1785,” observed:—
“I am very happy to hear that both you and Mr. Fletcher have escaped the fevers, having been so much among them. The poor must feel themselves greatly obliged for this; for it is of much more use to visit them when sick than even to give them money.”
The revered Vicar of Shoreham, the Rev. Vincent Perronet, died exactly a week before the date of this letter, and was buried on May 14, by Charles Wesley, who wrote to Mrs. Fletcher, as follows:—
“Marylebone, May 24, 1785.
“My Dear Sister,—If you love Mr. Fletcher, you ought to love the poor Methodists; for to their prayers you owe him, and he you. I found words, and the people faith, while we heard, at Bristol” (in 1776), “that our friend was just departing.[633] You have been the instrument of adding some years to his valuable life. Remember, for the short time that I shall want your prayers, my dear friend, your old faithful servant,
“C. Wesley.”
And then, on the same sheet, the poet of Methodism wrote to Fletcher himself the following:—
“My Very Dear Brother,—You ought to have paid the last office, instead of me, to our most venerable Archbishop at Shoreham. On Sunday, I deposited the sacred ashes in his partner’s grave, and preached twice. His death was such as his life promised. For many years, he breathed the pure spirit of love. The survivor who follows him nearest is longo proximus intervallo.
“A fortnight ago, I preached the condemned sermon to above twenty criminals. Every one of them, I have good grounds to believe, died penitent. Twenty more must die next week.
“Sally presents her duty and love: the rest join. Direct to me in Marylebone, and help me to depart in peace.”[634]
This, probably, was the last letter which Fletcher received from his old and loving friend. Within three years afterwards, Charles Wesley did “depart in peace.” Fletcher’s last letters, written eight weeks after the date of the foregoing, were addressed to James Ireland, Esq., and to Lady Mary Fitzgerald. It has been already stated that fever was fatally prevalent at Madeley in the summer of 1785, and an extract from a letter written by William Bosanquet, Esq., expressing his happiness that Fletcher and his wife had escaped the pestilence, has been already given. Soon after that, the sister of Mr. Bosanquet caught the infection; and Fletcher wrote as follows to Mr. Ireland:—
“Madeley, July 19, 1785.
“My Dear Friend,—Blessed be God, we are still alive, and, in the midst of many infirmities, we enjoy a degree of health, spiritually and bodily. O how good was the Lord, to come as Son of man to live here for us, and to come in His Spirit to live in us for ever! This is a mystery of godliness. The Lord make us full witnesses of it!
“A week ago, I was tried to the quick by a fever with which my dear wife was afflicted. Two persons, whom she had visited, having been carried off, within a pistol-shot of our house, I dreaded her being the third. But the Lord has heard prayer, and she is spared. Oh, what is life! ‘On what a slender thread hang everlasting things!’ My comfort, however, is, that this thread is as strong as the will of God, and the word of His grace, which cannot be broken.
“That grace and peace, love and thankful joy, may ever attend you is the wish of your most obliged friends,
“John and Mary Fletcher.”[635]
The day after this, he wrote the following to the Right Honorable Lady Mary Fitzgerald:—
“Madeley, July 20, 1785.
“Hon. and Dear Lady,—We have received your kind letter, and have mournfully acquiesced in the will of our heavenly Father, who, by various infirmities and providences, weans us from ourselves and our friends, that we may be His without reserve. It was, perhaps, a peculiar mercy that Providence blocked up your way to this place this summer. A bad putrid fever carries off several people in these parts. Two of our neighbours died of it last week; and my wife, who had visited them, was taken in so violent a manner, that I was obliged to offer her up to God in good earnest, as an oblation worthy a son of Abraham. I hope the worst is over; but her weakness will long preach to me, as well as my own.
“Dying people, we live in the midst of dying people. O let us live in sight of a dying, rising Saviour; and the prospect of death will become first tolerable, and then joyous! Or, if we weep, as our Lord, at the grave of our friends, or at the side of their deathbeds, we shall triumph in hope that all will be for the glory of God, and the good of our souls.
“I am, my dear lady, etc.,
“John Fletcher.”[636]
Twenty-five days after writing this, his last letter, Fletcher himself was dead. His wife, who had so narrowly escaped becoming a victim to the prevailing fever, shall tell the remainder of his earthly story. The day after the funeral, she wrote a letter to Wesley, a copy of which she immediately gave to Fletcher’s “old friend, Winifred Edmunds, whose son,” says she, “prints it for the satisfaction of many who have made applications for some account of God’s dealings with my beloved husband. I consider this a debt I owe to his dear orphans at Madeley; and, as it is probable I may be called away by the same fever, perhaps this may be the last office of love I can yield them.” The title of the publication was, “A Letter to the Rev. Mr. Wesley, on the Death of the Rev. Mr. Fletcher, Vicar of Madeley, in Shropshire. Madeley: Printed by J. Edmunds.” 16mo, 16 pp. About the same time, however, Mrs. Fletcher wrote a much longer account, which was printed with the following title: “A Letter to Mons. H. L. de la Flechere, Assessor Ballival of Nyon, in the Canton of Berne, Switzerland, on the Death of his Brother, the Reverend John William De la Flechere, Twenty-five Years Vicar of Madeley, Shropshire. London, 1786.” 12mo, 64 pp. From these two publications, the following account is taken. Writing to Fletcher’s brother, the mourning widow said:—
“As there is no one to whom my dearest husband was more closely united than yourself, so there is no one who can more tenderly sympathize with me in a loss so mutual. You have expressed a desire to receive from my own pen some account of a life the most angelic I have ever known; and I will endeavour to comply with your request as far as my weak state of body and torn nerves will permit.
“From the beginning, he was a laborious workman in his Lord’s vineyard, till he had spent himself in the best of services and was ripening fast for glory. Those sinners who fled from him he pursued to every corner of his parish by all sorts of ways, public and private, early and late, in season and out of season, entreating and warning them to flee from the wrath to come. Some made it an excuse for not attending the service on Sunday mornings that they did not awake early enough to get their families ready. He promised to be their watchman; and, taking a bell in his hand, was accustomed, at five in the morning, to go round the more distant parts of the parish, reminding the inhabitants of their invitation to the house of God.
“But he did not confine his labours to this parish. For many years, he regularly preached at places eight, ten, or sixteen miles distant, returning home the same night, though he seldom reached it before one or two in the morning. At a little Society, which he had gathered about six miles from Madeley, he preached two or three times in a week at five in the morning. As to visiting the sick, this was a duty for which he was ever ready. If he heard the knocker in the middle of the coldest winter night, his window was instantly thrown up, and the uniform answer was, ‘I will attend you immediately.’
“His frequent journeys to Trevecca, where he superintended a college of young men designed for the ministry, added much to his other fatigues,—riding on bad roads and wading through waters. Very often, in travelling through Wales, he was obliged to lie in damp and unsuitable lodgings; which, I have heard him observe, gave a deep stroke to his constitution.
“With regard to the success of his labours, it is a subject on which he has so often stopped my mouth that I will only say, besides the great reformation that has taken place in this parish, as to outward behaviour, he has left behind him a goodly company of upright, earnest people, whom he had gathered into little Societies, and who now mourn, as sheep bereaved of their dear shepherd.
“Never did I behold any one more dead to the things of the world. I have heard him say he was never happier than when he had given away the last penny he had in the house. If at any time I had gold in the drawer, it seemed to afford him no comfort; but if he could find a handful of small silver when going out to visit the sick, he would express as much pleasure over it as a miser would in discovering a bag of hidden treasure. He was never better pleased with my employment than when he had set me to prepare food or physic for the poor. He could hardly relish his dinner if some sick neighbour had not a part; nor could I sometimes keep the linen in his drawers for the same reason. On Sabbath days, he provided refreshments for numbers of people who came from a distance to hear the Word, and his house was devoted to their convenience. Once a poor widow, who feared God, being brought into difficulties, he immediately took all his pewter from the kitchen shelves, saying, ‘This I can do without; it will relieve your want, and a wooden trencher serves me better.’ Sometimes, in epidemic disorders, when the neighbours were afraid to nurse the sick, he has gone from house to house seeking help for them; and, when none could be found, has offered to sit up with the sick himself. In his younger years, he was ready to weep when five or six letters were brought, at threepence or fourpence a-piece, and he, perhaps, had only a shilling in the house to distribute among the poor to whom he was going. Frequently would he say to me, ‘O Mary, cannot we do without beer? Let us drink water, and buy less meat, that our necessities may give way to the extremities of the poor.’ But with all his charity, he was careful to avoid debts. While he gave all he could, he made it a rule to pay ready money for everything, believing this was the only way to keep the mind free from cares.
“He always had a steady, firm reliance upon the love and faithfulness of God. Sometimes, when I have expressed a fear of trials, he would answer, ‘The Lord orders all, and I leave everything to Him. I always seem conscious He gives His angels charge concerning us, and therefore think we are equally safe everywhere.’ He had many remarkable deliverances. Sometimes, both himself and his horse, in dark nights, have fallen down steep places, and yet both have been preserved. Once, I believe in Wales, in passing over a wooden bridge it broke asunder, and he and his mare sank into the river, but both got safe to land.
“A little before his last illness, being on his knees in prayer for light whether he should go to London or not,[637] the answer seemed to him, ‘No, not to London, but to your grave.’ Acquainting me with this, he said, with a heavenly smile, ‘Satan would represent this as something awful, the cold grave, the cold grave!’ On the following Sabbath (which I think was the next day), the anthem sung in the church was the Twenty-third Psalm. On his return home, he observed how the words of the Psalm had been blest to him; and from that time he seemed to be without the least temptation.
“Still, there was scarce a night but some part of it was spent in groans for the souls and bodies of those committed to his care. I really dreaded his hearing either of the sins or sufferings of any of his people before he went to bed, knowing how strong the impression would be upon his mind.
“In the last years of his life, he never, except once, travelled far from home without being in danger of a relapse into his consumption; and after his return, he would be weeks before he recovered his usual strength. He also sometimes said to me that, though he had been engaged in the work of the Lord in various places and situations, the seasons of his closest communion with God were always in his own house and church.
“With regard to his communion with God, he constantly endeavoured to maintain an uninterrupted sense of the Divine presence. In order to this, he was slow of speech, and had the greatest government of his words. He acted, he spake, he thought, as under the immediate eye of God. Thus setting God always before him, he remained unmoved, at all times possessing internal recollection. I never saw him diverted therefrom on any occasion whatever. I travelled with him above a thousand miles, during which journeys neither change of company, place, nor circumstances ever seemed to make the least difference in his fixed attention to the presence of God. He was always striving to raise his own and every other spirit into close and immediate intercourse with God; and I can say, with truth, that all his union with me was so mingled with prayer and praise, that every employment and every meal were perfumed therewith.
“Some time ago, when the fever began to rage among us, he preached a sermon on visiting the sick; in which he seemed to be carried out of himself, observing, ‘What do you fear? You are afraid of catching the distemper, and of dying with those who have it. O fear no more! What an honour to die in your Master’s service! If this were permitted to me, I should esteem it a singular favour.’
“During the last few months, though his health and strength sensibly increased, he was constantly crying out for dying grace. Often would he say, ‘O Mary, I am afraid lest we should have our good things here. Let us look up. Let us live above all. We have one foot in the grave.’ He scarcely ever lay down or rose up without repeating—
“I nothing have, I nothing am;
My treasure’s in the bleeding Lamb,
Both now and evermore.
“There was scarce an hour in which he was not calling upon me to drop every thought and every care, that we might attend to nothing but drinking deeper into God. We spent much time in prayer for the fulness of the Spirit, and were led to an act of abandonment (as we called it) of our whole selves into the hands of God, to do or to suffer whatever was pleasing to Him.
“On Thursday, August 4, he was occupied in the work of God from three in the afternoon till nine at night; when he came home, and said, ‘I have taken cold.’ On Friday and Saturday, he was poorly; but went out part of each day, and seemed uncommonly drawn out in prayer.
“On Saturday night, his fever first appeared very strong. I begged him not to go to the church in the morning; but to let a pious brother,[638] who was with us, preach in the yard; but he told me, it was the will of the Lord that he should go. When I met a little company of our pious women, on Sunday morning, I begged they would pray that he might be strengthened. In reading the prayers, he almost fainted. I got through the crowd, with a friend, and entreated him to come out of the desk, as did some others; but, in his sweet manner, he let us know we were not to interrupt the order of God. I then retired to my pew. All around me were in tears. When he was a little refreshed, by the windows being opened and a nosegay thrown into the desk by a friend, he proceeded with the service. Going into the pulpit, he preached with a strength and recollection which surprised us all. In his first prayer, he said, ‘Lord, Thou wilt manifest Thy strength in weakness. We confer not with flesh and blood; but put our trust under the shadow of Thy wings.’
“His text was, ‘O Lord, Thou preservest man and beast. How excellent is Thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings.’ After sermon, he went up the aisle to the communion-table, with these words, ‘I am going to throw myself under the wings of the cherubim, before the mercy-seat.’ The congregation was large, and the service lasted till nearly two o’clock. Sometimes he could scarcely stand, and was often obliged to stop for want of power to speak. The people were deeply affected. Weeping was on every side. Notwithstanding his extreme weakness, he gave out several verses of hymns, and uttered various lively sentences of exhortation.
“As soon as the service was over, we hurried him away to bed, where he immediately fainted. He then dropped into a sleep for some time; and, when he awoke, he cried out, with a pleasant smile, ‘Now, my dear, thou seest I am no worse for doing the Lord’s work. He never fails me when I trust in Him.’ He dozed most of the evening, now and then awaking full of the praises of God. At night, his fever returned, and his strength decreased amazingly.
“On Monday and Tuesday, he lay on a couch in the study, was at times very restless, but often slept. When awake, he was delighted in hearing me read hymns, and tracts on faith and love. His words were animating, and his patience beyond expression. I asked, ‘Hast thou any conviction that the Lord is about to take thee?’ He answered, ‘No, not in particular; only I always see death so near, that we both seem to stand on the verge of eternity.’ Sometimes he would say, ‘O Polly! shall I ever see the day when thou must be carried out to be buried? I shrink at giving my dear Polly to the worms.’ Awaking on one occasion, he said, ‘It was Israel’s fault that they asked for signs. We will not do so; but, abandoning our whole selves into the hands of God, we will there lie patiently, assured that He will do all things well.’
“On Wednesday, August 10, he told me, he had received such a manifestation of the full meaning of the words, ‘God is love,’ as he could not tell. ‘It fills me,’ he said, ‘it fills me every moment. O Polly! my dear Polly! God is love! Shout! Shout aloud! Oh! it so fills me, that I want a gust of praise to go to the ends of the earth. But it seems as if I could not speak much longer. Let us fix upon a sign between ourselves’ (tapping me twice with his finger). ‘By this I mean God is love, and we will draw each other into God. Observe! by this we will draw each other into God.’ Sally coming in, he cried, ‘O Sally! God is love! Shout, both of you! I want to hear you shout His praise!’ All this time, his medical attendant hoped he was in no danger. He knew his disease to be the fever; but, as he had no bad headache, slept much without the least delirium, and had an almost regular pulse, the symptoms were thought to be favourable.
“On Thursday, August 11, his speech began to fail; but to his friendly doctor he would not be silent while he had any power to speak, often saying, ‘O Sir, you take much thought for my body; give me leave to take thought for your soul.’ When I could scarcely understand anything he said, I spoke the words, ‘God is love!’ Instantly he caught them, and broke out in a rapture, ‘God is love, love, love! O for the gust of praise I want to sound!’ Here his voice again failed. If I named his sufferings, he would smile, and make the sign.
“On Friday, August 12, finding his body covered with spots, I so far understood them as to feel a sword pierce through my soul. As I knelt by his bed, with my hand in his, intreating the Lord to be with us in this tremendous hour, he strove to say many things, but could not. At length, pressing my hand, and often repeating the sign, he breathed out, ‘Head of the Church, be head to my wife!’ Sally said to him, ‘My dear master, do you know me?’ He replied, ‘Sally, God will put His right hand under you.’ She added, ‘O my dear master, should you be taken away, what a disconsolate creature will my poor mistress be!’ He answered, ‘God will be her all in all.’ He had always delighted in the lines—
“‘Jesu’s blood, through earth and skies,
Mercy, free, boundless mercy cries.’
“When I repeated them to him, he cried, ‘Boundless, boundless!’ and added, though with great difficulty—
“‘Mercy’s full power I soon shall prove,
Lov’d with an everlasting love.’
“On the afternoon of Saturday, August 13, while a few Christian friends were standing near his bed, he stretched out his hand to each of them, and, to a minister, remarked, ‘Are you ready to assist to-morrow?’ One asked, ‘Do you think the Lord will raise you up?’ He strove to answer, ‘Raise in resur... raise in resur....’ To another, who put the same question, he replied, ‘I leave it all to God.’ I said, ‘My dear creature, I ask not for myself, but for the sake of others. If Jesus is very present with thee, lift thy right hand.’ He did so. I added, ‘If the prospect of glory opens before thee, repeat the sign.’ He raised his hand again; and, in half a minute, a second time. After this, his dear hands moved no more; but, on my asking, ‘Art thou in much pain?’ he answered, ‘No.’
“From this time, he entered into a kind of sleep, though with his eyes open and fixed. Twenty-four hours, my dearly beloved breathed like a person in common sleep; and then, at thirty-five minutes past ten on Sunday night, August 14, his precious soul entered into the joy of his Lord, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. I was scarce a minute at a time from him, night or day, during his illness, and I can truly say—
“‘No cloud did arise, to darken the skies,
Or hide for one moment his Lord from his eyes.’
“And here I break off my mournful story. On my bleeding heart, his fair picture of heavenly excellence will be for ever drawn. When I call to mind his ardent zeal, his laborious endeavours to seek and save the lost, his diligence in the employment of his time, his Christlike condescension towards me, and his uninterrupted converse with heaven, I may well be allowed to add, my loss is beyond the power of words to paint.
“On August 17, his dear remains were deposited in Madeley churchyard; amid the tears and lamentations of thousands, who flocked about the bier of their dead pastor. Between the house and the church, they sung these verses:—
“‘With heavenly weapons he hath fought
The battles of the Lord:
Finish’d his course, and kept the faith,
And gain’d the great reward.
“‘God hath laid up in heaven for him
A crown which cannot fade;
The righteous Judge, at that great day,
Shall place it on his head.’
“The service was performed by the Rev. Mr. Hatton, Rector of Waters-Upton, whom the Lord moved, in a pathetic manner, to speak to the weeping flock. At my request, he read the following paper:—[639]
“‘It was the desire of my beloved husband to be buried in this plain manner, and, out of tenderness, he begged that I might not be present. In all things I would obey him.
“‘Permit me, by the mouth of a friend, to bear my testimony, to the glory of God, that I never knew anyone walk so closely with God as he did. The Lord gave him a conscience tender as the apple of an eye. He literally preferred the interest of every one to his own. He shared his all with the poor, who lay so close his heart, that, when his speech was so gone that he could utter nothing without difficulty, he cried out, “O my Poor! What will become of my Poor?” He was blessed with so great a degree of humility as is scarcely to be found. I am witness, how often he has taken real pleasure in being treated with contempt. It seemed the very food of his soul, to be little and unknown. When he said to me, “Thou wilt write a line or two to my brother in Switzerland, if I die,” I replied, “My dear, dear love, I will write him all the Lord’s dealings with thee.” “No, no,” said he, “write nothing about me. I only desire to be forgotten. God is all.”
“‘His diligent visitation of the sick laid the foundation of the spotted fever of which he died; and his vehement desire to take his last leave of you, with dying lips and hands, gave (it is supposed) the finishing stroke, by preparing his blood for putrefaction. Thus did he live and die your servant.
“‘He walked with death always in sight. About two months ago, he came to me and said, “My dear love, I know not how it is, but I have a strange impression death is very near us, as if it would be a sudden stroke upon one of us; and it draws out my soul in prayer that we may be ready.” He then broke out, “Lord, prepare the soul Thou wilt call; and, O stand by the poor disconsolate one who shall be left behind!”
“‘Three years, nine months, and two days, I have possessed my heavenly-minded husband; but now the sun of my earthly joy is set for ever.’”
This is a very artless story; but it is not less valuable because of that. Mrs. Fletcher sent a copy to Charles Wesley, together with the following note:—
“Madeley, August 24, 1785.
“Dear Sir,—Enclosed you have an account of my feelings when I thought myself dying, as did most about me. I prayed for strength to do justice to my dearest, dearest love. I wrote it in one day, but could not go over it a second time. Take it, then, as it flowed from my full heart, without a second thought, and pray for your deeply distressed friend. I cannot find your brother. I wrote to him at first, but have got no answer.”[640]
Wesley, in his eighty-third year, was in the west of England, travelling and preaching with surprising energy. On the day of Fletcher’s death, he preached twice at Salisbury; then hastened to Shaftesbury, Castle-Carey, Shepton-Mallet, Taunton, Collumpton, Exeter, and Plymouth; then went right through Cornwall; and, on September 3, got to Bristol, in the neighbourhood of which city he spent a month. On October 3, he came to London; then made what he calls “a little excursion” into Hertfordshire, another into Oxfordshire, and a third into Norfolk. Here, at Norwich, on October 24, he found time to write a sermon on the death of Fletcher, which he delivered in London on November 6. The sermon was published immediately, with the following address “To the reader” prefixed[641]:—
“A consciousness of my own inability to describe, in a manner worthy of the subject, such a person as Mr. Fletcher, was one great reason of my not writing this sooner. I judged, only an Apelles was proper to paint an Alexander. But I, at length, submitted to importunity, and hastily put together some memorials of this great man: intending, if God permit, when I have more leisure and more materials, to write a fuller account of his life.
“John Wesley.
“London, November 9, 1785.”
The concluding paragraph of Wesley’s sermon must be quoted:—
“For many years, I despaired of finding any inhabitant of Great Britain that could stand in any degree of comparison with Gregory Lopez, or Monsieur de Renty. But let any impartial person judge, if Mr. Fletcher was at all inferior to them? Did he not experience as deep communion with God, and as high a measure of inward holiness, as was experienced either by one or the other of those burning and shining lights? And it is certain his outward holiness shone before men, with full as bright a lustre as theirs. But if any should attempt to draw a parallel between them, there are two circumstances that deserve consideration. One is, we are not assured that the writers of their Lives did not extenuate, if not suppress, what was amiss in them. And some things amiss we are assured there were, namely, many touches of superstition, and some of idolatry, in worshipping Saints, the Virgin Mary in particular. But I have not suppressed or extenuated anything in Mr. Fletcher’s character. For indeed I knew nothing that was amiss, nothing that needed to be extenuated, much less suppressed. A second circumstance is, that the Writers of their Lives could not have so full a knowledge of them, as both Mrs. Fletcher and I had of Mr. Fletcher, being both eye and ear-witnesses of his whole conduct. Consequently, we know that his life was not sullied with any mixture of either idolatry or superstition. I was intimately acquainted with him for above thirty years. I conversed with him morning, noon, and night, without the least reserve, during a journey of many hundred miles. And, in all that time, I never heard him speak one improper word, nor saw him do an improper action.—To conclude. Many exemplary men have I known, holy in heart and life, within fourscore years. But one equal to him I have not known: one so inwardly and outwardly devoted to God. So unblameable a character in every respect, I have not found either in Europe or America. And I scarce expect to find another such, on this side eternity.”
Human praise could not be higher than this; and yet even the Monthly Review, which had so often and so unjustly denounced the Methodists, in its notice of Wesley’s sermon, remarked:—
“Mr. Fletcher was one of the most considerable among the Methodist ministers of the Wesleyan division. We have long been acquainted with his good character; and we firmly believe that the high encomiums here passed on him were justly merited in their fullest extent.”[642]
Scores of other eulogies have been written, but only four shall be added here, and these by persons who were well acquainted with the man of whom they speak.
The Rev. Joshua Gilpin’s elaborate biographical “Notes,” interspersed in Fletcher’s “Portrait of St. Paul,” are too numerous and lengthened to be introduced, but an extract from the last of them (the twenty-ninth) must be given:—
“On the day of Mr. Fletcher’s departure, as I was preparing to attend my own church, which was at the distance of nine miles from Madeley, I received a message from Mrs. Fletcher, requesting my immediate attendance at the vicarage. I instantly followed the messenger, and found Mr. Fletcher with every symptom of approaching dissolution upon him. I had ever looked up to this man of God with an extraordinary degree of affection and reverence; and, on this afflicting occasion, my heart was uncommonly affected and depressed. It was now in vain to recollect that public duty required my presence in another place. Unfitted for every duty, except that of silently watching the bed of death, I found it impossible to withdraw from the solemn scene. I had received from this evangelical teacher, in days that were past, many excellent precepts with respect to holy living; and now I desired to receive from him the last important lesson with respect to holy dying. And truly this concluding lesson was of inestimable worth, since so much patience and resignation, so much peace and composure, were scarcely ever discovered in the same circumstances before.
“While their pastor was breathing out his soul into the hands of a faithful Creator, his people were offering up their joint supplications on his behalf in the house of God. Little, however, was seen among them but affliction and tears.[643] The whole village wore an air of consternation and sadness, and not one joyful song was heard among its inhabitants. Hasty messengers were passing to and fro with anxious enquiries and confused reports; and the members of every family sat together in silence that day, awaiting, with trembling expectation, the issue of every hour. After the conclusion of the evening service, several of the poor, who came from distant parts, and who were usually entertained under Mr. Fletcher’s roof, still lingered about the house, and seemed unable to tear themselves away from the place without a sight of their expiring pastor. Secretly informed of their desire, I obtained them the permission they wished; and the door of the chamber being set open, immediately before which Mr. Fletcher was sitting upright in his bed, with the curtains undrawn, they slowly moved, one by one, along the gallery, severally pausing as they passed by the door, and casting in a look of mingled supplication and anguish. It was, indeed, an affecting sight.
“And now the hour speedily approached that was to put a solemn termination to our hopes and fears. His weakness very perceptibly increased, but his countenance continued unaltered to the last. Mrs. Fletcher was kneeling by the side other departing husband, the medical attendant sat at his head, while I sorrowfully waited near his feet. Uncertain whether or not he was totally separated from us, we pressed nearer; but his warfare was accomplished, and the happy spirit had taken its everlasting flight.”
James Ireland, Esq., was one of Fletcher’s most loving and well-beloved friends. In an unpublished letter, addressed to Mrs. Fletcher, and dated “Brislington, November 6, 1785,” he says, Wesley had informed him he was about to write the “Life of Fletcher,” and had asked him to supply materials. In his reply, he had said, “I cannot assist you to write the life of my dear friend, though I have ever respected and honoured you.” Mr. Ireland adds, that whatever information he can furnish he will send to Mrs. Fletcher, and leave it to her to use as she thinks best. He then proceeds:—
“I have often felt that I would have divided my last shilling with Mr. Fletcher. We were once for months together, day and night; and when we parted, we both wept. Such a soul I never knew; such a great man, in every sense of the word. He was too great to bear the name of any sect. Mr. Townsend, with whom I lately parted, speaks of him as the greatest man that has lived in this century, and begs his life may not be penned in haste.”
In another unpublished letter, also addressed to Mrs. Fletcher, and dated “October 6, 1786,” Mr. Ireland wrote:—
“I never saw Mr. Fletcher’s equal. On him great grace was bestowed. What deadness to the world! What spiritual mindedness! What zeal for souls! What communion with God! What intercourse with heaven! What humility at the feet of Jesus! What moderation towards all men! What love for the poor! In short, he possessed the mind which was in Christ Jesus.”
“The Rev. Henry Venn, after reading Wesley’s “Life of Fletcher,” wrote as follows to Lady Mary Fitzgerald:—
“Yelling, March 3, 1787. Mr. Fletcher’s humility was so unfeigned and so deep, that when I thanked him for two sermons he had one day preached to my people at Huddersfield, he answered as no man ever did to me. With eyes and hands uplifted, he exclaimed, ‘Pardon, pardon, pardon, O my God!’ The words went to my very soul. Great grace was upon this blessed servant of Christ.
“Love to man and bowels of mercies displayed in him a noble imitation of his Incarnate God. He indeed thought a day lost, and could find no rest in his soul, unless he was doing good to the bodies and souls of men.
“Love to the Lord.—How did it govern and flourish in dear Mr. Fletcher! His admirable consort tells us, he scarcely was awake in the night a moment without lifting up his soul to God in holy aspirations.
“I have seen Mr. Fletcher, for six weeks together, under a hectic fever, sometimes spitting blood, when night after night he could rest very little—well pleased to suffer—never complaining, never but cheerful. Once, when I asked him how he did, ‘Oh!’ said he, ‘how light is the chastisement I suffer! How heavy the strokes I deserve! I love the rod of my heavenly Father!’ Like his Saviour, he could continue in prayer, in the wood, all night long; and, like Him, lie prostrate on the ground, pleading for grace to fulfil his ministry.”[644]
Between Fletcher and Joseph Benson there was a most intimate and confidential friendship. Benson, in a letter to Wesley, wrote:—
“As to drawing the character of that great and good man, Mr. Fletcher, it is what I will not attempt. I have been looking over many of his letters, and observe in them all, what I have a thousand times observed in his conversation and behaviour, the plainest marks of every Christian grace and virtue.
“Perhaps, if he followed his Master more closely in one thing than another, it was in humility. He was constantly upon his guard lest any expression should drop, either from his lips or pen, which tended to make anyone think well of him; either on account of his family, or learning, or parts, or usefulness. He took as much pains to conceal his excellences, as others do to show theirs.
“He was a man of a serious spirit, one that stood at the utmost distance from levity of every kind. Though he was constantly cheerful, as rejoicing in hope of his heavenly inheritance, yet he had too deep a sense of his own wants, and the wants of the Church of God, as also of the sins and miseries of mankind, to be at any time light or trifling.
“In hungering and thirsting after righteousness, he was peculiarly worthy of our imitation. He never rested in anything he had either experienced or done in spiritual matters. He was a true Christian racer, always on the stretch for higher and better things. Though his attainments, both in experience and usefulness, were far above the common standard, yet the language of his conversation and behaviour always was, ‘Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfected; but I follow after, if by any means I may apprehend that for which I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.’ He had his eye upon a full conformity to the Son of God; or what the Apostle terms, ‘the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.’ Nor could he be satisfied with anything less.
“He was meek, like his Master, as well as lowly in heart. Not that he was so by nature, but of a fiery, passionate spirit; insomuch that he has frequently thrown himself on the floor, and lain there most of the night bathed in tears, imploring victory over his own temper. And he did obtain the victory, in a very eminent degree. For twenty years and upwards before his death, no one ever saw him out of temper, or heard him utter a rash expression, on any provocation whatever.[645] And he did not want provocation, and that sometimes in a high degree; especially from those whose religious sentiments he thought it his duty to oppose. But none of these things moved him: no, not in the least degree. The keenest word he used was, ‘What a world, what a religious world we live in!’ I have often thought the testimony, that Bishop Burnet bears of Archbishop Leighton, might be borne of him with equal propriety: ‘After an intimate acquaintance of many years, and after being with him by night and by day, at home and abroad, in public and in private, on sundry occasions and in various affairs,—I must say, I never heard an idle word drop from his lips, nor any conversation which was not to the use of edifying. I never saw him in any temper, in which I myself would not have wished to be found at death.’ Any one, who has been intimately acquainted with Mr. Fletcher, will say the same of him: and they who knew him best will say it with the most assurance.
“Hence arose his readiness to bear with the weaknesses, and forgive the faults of others: which was the more remarkable, considering his flaming zeal against sin, and his concern for the glory of God. Such hatred to sin, and such love to the sinner, I never saw joined together before.
“He never mentioned the faults of an absent person, unless absolute duty required it. And then he spoke with the utmost tenderness, extenuating, rather than aggravating. None could draw his picture more exactly than St. Paul has done, in the thirteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians. ‘He suffered long and was kind; he envied not; acted not rashly; was not puffed up; did not behave himself unseemly; sought not his own; was not easily provoked; he thought no evil; rejoiced not in iniquity, but rejoiced in the truth; he covered all things; believed all things; hoped all things; and endured all things.’ It would be easy to enlarge on all these particulars, and show how they were exemplified in him; but, waiving this, I would only observe, that, with regard to two of them, kindness to others, and not seeking his own, he had few equals.
“His kindness to others was such, that he bestowed his all upon them: his time, his talents, his substance. His knowledge, his eloquence, his health, his money, were employed, day by day, for the good of mankind. He prayed, he wrote, he preached, he visited the sick and well, he conversed, he gave, he laboured, he suffered, winter and summer, night and day: he endangered, nay, destroyed his health, and in the end gave his life also for the profit of his neighbours, that they might be saved from everlasting death. He denied himself even of such food as was necessary for him, that he might have to give to them that had none. And when he was constrained to change his manner of living, still his diet was plain and simple. And so were his clothing and furniture, that he might save all that was possible for his poor neighbours.
“He sought not his own in any sense: not his own honour, but the honour of God, in all he said or did. He sought not his own interest, but the interest of his Lord, spreading knowledge, holiness, and happiness, as far as he possibly could. He sought not his own pleasure, but studied to ‘please all men, for their good to edification;’ and to please Him that had called him to His kingdom and glory.
“But I do not attempt his full character. I will only add, ‘He was blameless and harmless, a son of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation: shining among them as a light in the world.’”
Both Wesley and Benson insert this eulogium in their lives of Fletcher; but Wesley adds:—
“I think one talent wherewith God had endued Mr. Fletcher has not been sufficiently noted yet. I mean his courtesy; in which there was not the least touch either of art or affectation. It was pure and genuine, and sweetly constrained him to behave to everyone (although particularly to inferiors), in a manner not to be described: with so inexpressible a mixture of humility, love, and respect. This directed his words, the tone of his voice, his looks, his whole attitude, his every motion.
“‘Grace was in all his steps, heaven in his eye,
In all his gestures sanctity and love.’”
The entry of Fletcher’s death, in the register of Madeley parish church, is a brief obituary:—
“Memorandum.
“John Fletcher, Clerk, died on Sunday evening, August 14, 1785. He was one of the most apostolic men of the age in which he lived. His abilities were extraordinary, and his labours were unparalleled. He was a burning and shining light; and as his life had been a common blessing to the inhabitants of this parish, so the death of this great man was lamented by them as a common and irreparable loss.
“This little testimony was inserted by one who sincerely loved and honoured him.
“Joshua Gilpin, Vicar of Rockwardine.”
The inscription on his tombstone was written by his widow, and is as follows[646]:—
“Here lies the Body of
THE REV. JOHN WILLIAM DE LA FLECHERE,
Vicar of Madeley,
Who was born at Nyon, in Switzerland,
September the 12th, 1729,
And finished his course, August the 14th, 1785,
In this Village;
where his unexampled labours
will long be remembered.
He exercised his Ministry for the space of
Twenty-five Years,
In this Parish,
with uncommon zeal and ability.
MANY BELIEVED HIS REPORT, AND BECAME
HIS JOY AND CROWN OF REJOICING;
WHILE OTHERS CONSTRAINED HIM TO TAKE UP
THE LAMENTATION OF THE PROPHET,
‘ALL THE DAY LONG HAVE I STRETCHED OUT MY HANDS
UNTO A DISOBEDIENT AND GAINSAYING PEOPLE:
YET SURELY MY JUDGMENT IS WITH THE LORD,
AND MY WORK WITH MY GOD.’
“‘He being dead, yet speaketh.’”
Another monument of Fletcher must be mentioned, erected in Methodism’s “Westminster Abbey”—the sacred old chapel in City Road, London. It is placed on the right-hand side of the communion table, immediately under a monument of Wesley. The sculpture at the top of it is a representation of the Ark of the Covenant. At one side are volumes, inscribed with the words, “Checks,” and “Portrait of St. Paul.” At the other side is an expanded scroll, with the motto, “With the meekness of wisdom.” At the bottom is a dove, hovering over pens and a roll of paper. The inscription on the tablet, composed by the Rev. Richard Watson,[647] is as follows:—
“Sacred to the Memory of
THE REV. JOHN WILLIAM DE LA FLECHERE,
Vicar of Madeley in Shropshire;
Born at Nyon, in Switzerland, the xii. of September,
A.D. MDCCXXIX; Died the XIV. of August, MDCCLXXXV.
A MAN EMINENT FOR GENIUS, ELOQUENCE, AND THEOLOGICAL LEARNING;
STILL MORE DISTINGUISHED FOR SANCTITY OF MANNERS, AND THE VIRTUES OF PRIMITIVE
CHRISTIANITY.
ADORNED WITH ‘WHATSOEVER THINGS ARE PURE, WHATSOEVER THINGS ARE LOVELY,’
AND BRINGING FORTH ‘THE FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT,’ IN SINGULAR RICHNESS AND MATURITY.
THE MEASURE OF EVERY OTHER GRACE IN HIM WAS EXCEEDED BY HIS DEEP AND UNAFFECTED
HUMILITY.
OF ENLARGED VIEWS AS TO THE MERIT OF THE ATONEMENT,
AND OF THOSE GRACIOUS RIGHTS WITH WHICH IT INVESTS ALL WHO BELIEVE,
HE HAD ‘BOLDNESS TO ENTER INTO THE HOLIEST BY THE BLOOD OF JESUS,’
AND IN REVERENT AND TRANSPORTING CONTEMPLATIONS,—THE HABIT OF HIS DEVOUT AND
HALLOWED SPIRIT,—
THERE DWELT AS BENEATH THE WINGS OF THE CHERUBIM,
BEHOLDING ‘THE GLORY OF GOD IN THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST,’ AND WAS ‘CHANGED INTO
THE SAME IMAGE;’
TEACHING BY HIS OWN ATTAINMENTS, MORE THAN EVEN BY HIS WRITINGS, THE FULNESS OF
EVANGELICAL PROMISES,
AND WITH WHAT INTIMACY OF COMMUNION MAN MAY WALK WITH GOD.
HE WAS THE FRIEND AND COADJUTOR OF THE REV. JOHN WESLEY,
WHOSE APOSTOLIC VIEWS OF THE DOCTRINES OF GENERAL REDEMPTION, JUSTIFICATION BY
FAITH, AND CHRISTIAN PERFECTION, HE SUCCESSFULLY DEFENDED,
LEAVING TO FUTURE AGES AN ABLE EXPOSITION OF ‘THE TRUTH WHICH IS ACCORDING TO
GODLINESS,’
AND ERECTING AN IMPREGNABLE RAMPART AGAINST PHARISAIC AND ANTINOMIAN ERROR,
IN A SERIES OF WORKS, DISTINGUISHED BY THE BEAUTY OF THEIR STYLE, BY FORCE OF
ARGUMENT,
AND BY A GENTLE AND CATHOLIC SPIRIT; AFFORDING AN EDIFYING EXAMPLE OF ‘SPEAKING
THE TRUTH IN LOVE,’
IN A LONG AND ARDENT CONTROVERSY.
FOR TWENTY-FIVE YEARS, THE PARISH OF MADELEY WAS THE SCENE OF HIS UNEXAMPLED
PASTORAL LABOURS;
AND HE WAS THERE INTERRED, AMIDST THE TEARS AND LAMENTATIONS OF THOUSANDS,
THE TESTIMONY OF THEIR HEARTS TO HIS EXALTED PIETY, AND TO HIS UNWEARIED EXERTIONS
FOR THEIR SALVATION:
BUT HIS MEMORY TRIUMPHED OVER DEATH;
AND HIS SAINTLY EXAMPLE EXERTS INCREASING INFLUENCE IN THE CHURCHES OF CHRIST,
THROUGH THE STUDY OF HIS WRITINGS, AND THE PUBLICATION OF HIS BIOGRAPHY.
IN TOKEN OF THEIR VENERATION FOR HIS CHARACTER,
AND IN GRATITUDE FOR THE SERVICES RENDERED BY HIM TO THE CAUSE OF TRUTH,
THIS MONUMENT WAS ERECTED BY THE TRUSTEES OF THIS CHAPEL, A.D. MDCCCXXII.”
No wonder that Wesley desired and requested Fletcher to be his successor; and no wonder that, while among his numerous publications there is only one biography written by himself, that conspicuous exception is “A Short Account of the Life and Death of the Rev. John Fletcher.“
Fletcher was distinguished for his genius; his learning; and his biblical and theological knowledge; but let all Methodists, throughout the world and as long as Methodism lasts, remember, in all their church-meetings and church-appointments, that “Wesley’s Designated Successor” was pre-eminently,—“A Good Man, and Full of the Holy Ghost and of Faith.”
THE END
Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Printers, London and Aylesbury.
600. Swedenborg died in 1772.
601. The titles were:—1. “A Rational Vindication of the Catholic Faith: being the First Part of a Vindication of Christ’s Divinity; inscribed to the Rev. Dr. Priestley, by J. Fletcher, Vicar of Madeley, Salop. Left imperfect by the Author, and now revised and finished, at Mrs. Fletcher’s request, by Joseph Benson, Hull.” 12mo, 223 pp. No date, but published in 1788 or 1789. The work consists of fourteen chapters, only four of which were written by Fletcher. The remaining ten were Mr. Benson’s productions.
2. “Socinianism Unscriptural; or, the Prophets and Apostles vindicated from the Charge of holding the Doctrine of Christ’s mere Humanity: being the Second Part of a Vindication of His Divinity: inscribed to the Rev. Dr. Priestley, by the late Rev. John Fletcher, Vicar of Madeley, Salop. To which is added, a Demonstration of the want of Common Sense in the New Testament Writers, etc., etc., in a Series of Letters to the Rev. Mr. Wesley, by Joseph Benson. Birmingham: 1791.” 12mo, 239 pp. Fletcher’s part of the volume occupies 118 pages.
602. “Thirteen Original Letters of the Rev. John Fletcher.” Bath, 1791, p. 36.
603. Letters, 1791, p. 300.
604. Before attending the Conference, Fletcher visited Miss Ritchie, who wrote: “1784, July 16. Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher visited Otley. I was truly blessed and edified by their society. Our house was full of company.” (“Memoir of Mrs. Mortimer,” by Agnes Bulmer, p. 97.)
605. Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, 1845, p. 12.
606. Respecting this sermon, John Beaumont, father of the celebrated Rev. Dr. Joseph Beaumont, wrote: “Mr. Fletcher dwelt much on the context, which speaks of the faith and works of the ancient worthies, and strongly enforced what he termed a working faith. I was blessed beyond description, and thought him certainly the most angelic man I had ever heard.” (“The Experience and Travels of John Beaumont.”)
607. “Life of Henry Moore,” by Mrs. Smith, p. 321.
608. Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, 1845, p. 14.
609. Benson’s “Life,” by Macdonald, p. 160.
610. Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, 1845, p. 15.
611. Benson’s “Life,” by Macdonald, p. 160.
612. Benson’s “Life of Fletcher.”
613. Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 142.
614. Mrs. Fletcher’s “Life,” by H. Moore, p. 183.
615. Christian Miscellany, 1848, p. 230.
616. Stevenson’s “Memorials of the Wesley Family,” p. 349.
617. On June 21, Pitt moved several resolutions to put an end to smuggling by reducing the duty upon tea from 50 to 12½ per cent.; and to increase the window tax in proportion. These resolutions were passed, though not without much debate.
618. Letters, 1791, p. 302.
619. “Mrs. Fletcher’s Life,” by H. Moore, p. 158.
620. The Youth’s Instructor, 1835, p. 305.
621. “Simeon’s Memoirs,” by W. Carus, M.A.
622. Christian Miscellany, 1848, p. 326.
623. Wesley’s Journal.
624. Letters, 1791, p. 303.
625. Ibid., p. 304.
626. In an unpublished letter, dated, “Sunday Evening, February 27, 1785,” and signed “John and Mary Fletcher,” but evidently written by the latter, it is said:—“My dear Mr. Fletcher has had a bad cold; but is better. He is all alive, and living for eternity.”
627. These names are in the original letter.
628. Letters, 1791, p. 307.
629. This was a premature statement. Mr. Dickenson did not marry Miss Briggs, Mr. Perronet’s grand-daughter, until three years later.
630. Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, 1825, p. 745.
631. Evidently, Fletcher hoped to attend Wesley’s Conference, begun in London on July 26, 1785, but his hope was not fulfilled.
632. Letters, 1791, p. 309.
633. The reference is to the hymn quoted at page 362 of the present work.
634. “Memoir of Mrs. Mortimer,” p. 101.
635. Letters, 1791, p. 310.
636. Fletcher’s Works, vol. viii., p. 329.
637. No doubt to attend Wesley’s Conference, which began on July 26.
638. No doubt, one of Wesley’s preachers.
639. Mr. Hatton also preached a funeral sermon, founded on Hebrews xiii. 7.
640. Jackson’s “Life of C. Wesley,” vol. ii., p. 432.
641. The title was, “A Sermon preached on the Occasion of the Death of the Rev. Mr. John Fletcher, Vicar of Madeley, Shropshire. By John Wesley, A.M.” 12mo. 32 pp.
642. Monthly Review, 1786, p. 79.
643. Another writer, who was present, relates that the congregation sang, or tried to sing, the affecting hymn which was composed and used at the time of Fletcher’s dangerous illness in 1776 (see pp. 362 and 368). He further says, “I never was witness to a scene so impressive and pathetic. Every breast felt, every countenance expressed, one common sentiment. Tears, sobs, and suppressed groans showed how sincerely the people esteemed their venerable pastor. When the hymn was sung, there was a general burst of sorrow. Even those who had spurned his instructions, deprecated his death as a public loss, and expressed their grief with uncommon agitation.” (Methodist Magazine, 1802, p. 572.)
644. “Life of Rev. H. Venn,” pp. 578–584.
645. Wesley’s “Life of Fletcher,” p. 173.
646. The inscription, given at the end of Wesley’s “Life of Fletcher,” is slightly different. In an unpublished letter, to Mrs. Crosby, dated August 16, 1788, Mrs. Fletcher wrote: “What was written on my dear’s tomb was different from my directions, though done with a good design to mend my language. I saw it not to be as good as my own, and had it altered” (then follows the inscription). “Compare this with that in Mr. Wesley’s ‘Life,’ and give Mr. Downes a copy of the right one. Every one was much pleased with the change; and, indeed, I was never at ease till it was done; but there were so many anxious to have it right that they spoiled it.”
647. Jackson’s “Centenary of Methodism,” p. 186.