Fletcher of Madeley Part 2

Think always of death, and the Cross, the hardness of thy heart and the blood of Christ.

Beware of relaxing, and of impatience; G.o.d is faithful, but He owes thee nothing.

Speak only when necessary.

Do not surrender thyself to any joy.

Rise in the morning without yielding to sloth.

Follow always thy first motion.

Be a true son of affliction.

Write down every evening whether thou hast kept these rules."

Among the Latin meditations is one headed "Deus mihi amandus est quid": "G.o.d is to be loved because--" And then follow various grounds for grat.i.tude and love:

"Because He created me, Of sound body and mind, In a middle station of life, and in the bosom of His Church; Preserves me alive and well; Has not given me over to the power of the devil; Gives all things necessary for life; In various ways, and wonderfully, has delivered me from death; Raised up for me good parents, teachers, friends; Gives me food, shelter, books, good health, clothing, friends, and a not dishonourable name; Has mercifully withheld hurtful things when I asked them; Before the foundations of the world determined to give His Son for me, And gave Him in time to flesh, infirmities, scorn, sorrows, poverty, and death; Imparts Him to me in the word, and in the holy supper."

Among the "rules for a holy life," written in English, the following may be quoted:

"Mortify thy five senses till crucified with Christ;

Sit at Christ's feet; cast away thy own will; consult His at every word, morsel, motion; ask His leave even in lawful actions.

Renounce thyself in all that can hinder thy union with G.o.d.

Desire nought but His love.

Mortify all affection toward inward, sensible, spiritual delights in grace; they rather please and comfort than sanctify.

The life of G.o.d consists not in high knowledge, but profound meekness, holy simplicity, and ardent love to G.o.d.

Receive afflictions as the best guides to perfection.

Remember always the presence of G.o.d.

Rejoice always in the will of G.o.d.

Direct all to the glory of G.o.d."

The little book from which these extracts are taken was Fletcher's companion in his hours of private prayer and communion with G.o.d. It was written, not for others, but for himself. For a century past it has been in safe and reverent keeping, and is now as he left it. Its pages are worn by his touch. With these hymns and meditations he nourished his soul in secret. With these rules he loved to bind his free Christian spirit. Like other saintly men, he found that the impulses, even of the regenerate life, may not be left to themselves with entire confidence in their sufficient working. He sought to strengthen them by meditation, to sustain them by spiritual exercises and discipline; he furnished them with tests and standards, and made self-examination definite and precise. He sought perfection at once in supreme love to G.o.d, and in the minutest details of character and conduct. Let this be borne in mind in connexion with the fact that Fletcher was a leader of the Evangelical Revival, and a founder and father of Methodism.

Evangelical religion has been charged with indifference to painstaking spiritual culture. Its doctrine of salvation by faith has been thought to carry with it self-confidence, familiar ways with G.o.d, and easy dealing with one's own soul. It is supposed to compensate for its insistence upon conversion, by sanctioning subsequent laxity in the matter of prayer and fasting. It is charged with spiritual shallowness, and asked why, with all its innumerable activities, it fails to produce the deeper and more disciplined devoutness of which Thomas a Kempis in the Roman, and Andrewes and Keble in the Anglican, communities are great examples.

A proper discussion of this question would require, amongst other things, an examination of the terms in which it is stated. They would be found to contain, with some truth, a.s.sumptions utterly false and misleading. Amongst these is the a.s.sumption that sanct.i.ty is not such, unless it have a certain form, diverging not too widely from an accepted type. The Roman controversialist objects to the Church of England that it does not exhibit notes of sanct.i.ty, "that it has no saints." As Dr. Mozley has said, "He refuses, in a certain case, to see and recognise the Christian type, because it does not come before him in the Latin shape, and with the accompaniments of intellectual grace and refinement, which it has incorporated on its European area."[2] By a very slight alteration in the wording of this sentence, it would describe with equal accuracy the att.i.tude of those who cannot recognise sanct.i.ty which does not come before them in the Anglican shape; and by a second and a third alteration, it would describe the inability, here and there existing, to discern any sanct.i.ty but that of an accepted type or favoured school. Much of the disparagement of "Evangelical"

piety is plainly of this kind; and the truth needs to be spoken with regard to all these narrow and sectarian gauges of Christian character.

Amid the "diversities of ministrations and diversities of workings,"

there is no essential distinction as to the so called "note of sanct.i.ty"; Eastern or Western, Anglican or Puritan, holiness is always and essentially the same, rebuking every attempt to fasten it to a particular type, or ignore it apart from a particular succession.

Fletcher was an Evangelical of Evangelicals, teaching conversion, the witness of the Spirit, and the entire sanctification of believers. He profoundly influenced the theology and general religious spirit and character of Methodism. What then is the bearing of his spiritual life and the influence of his example upon these latter? It is this: that while holiness is, in its truest, deepest aspect, the gift of G.o.d,--it is G.o.d who sanctifies as surely as it is G.o.d who justifies,--yet, alike in the pursuit and possession of holiness, the Christian is called to work together with G.o.d, in watchfulness and prayer, in self-examination and self-denial, in reading and meditation, "exercising himself unto G.o.dliness" in the many ways which Scripture enjoins and which insight and experience will suggest.

If at any time the Methodists, or Evangelical Christians generally, should let slip either of these truths; if holiness be thought of, on the one hand, as a human attainment and not a Divine gift, or, on the other, as a gift of G.o.d having no relation to personal discipline and culture,--they will at least be breaking with their best traditions, and have against them both the teaching and the example of their fathers.

This little manual of devotion, written by his own hand, and worn by long and frequent use, reveals much of the way in which Fletcher's inmost life was cultivated. Knowing that life as it was manifested in his character and conduct, we regard with deep interest the means by which it was nurtured in secret. The lovely growth of goodness had at the root of it the patient discipline here portrayed. We might have guessed as much, but here we see that it was so.

CHAPTER V.

_ENTERS THE MINISTRY._

From this brief glance at Fletcher's habits of devotion we return to the history of his life. He was not destined to be a religious recluse, cultivating in quiet places "a fugitive and cloistered virtue." His thirst for communion with G.o.d was equalled by his pa.s.sion for winning souls. If the one drove him to retirement, the other thrust him into society. He longed for others to possess the salvation that he had found. On such a matter he could not be silent, and he became a preacher almost before he knew it. Both in personal intercourse and in addressing a.s.semblies, his foreign accent and a certain winning simplicity of manner proved very attractive; but the hours spent alone with G.o.d and his own soul were the secret of a power to appeal and persuade that was well-nigh irresistible.

Naturally it was taken for granted that his proper vocation was the ministry. He was pressed by one and another, and particularly by Mr.

Hill, to enter holy orders; but his mind was not yet made up. His former shrinking from an office for which he felt himself unfit was not wholly removed. He thought it might be better to serve G.o.d in a private and less responsible way of life; and yet, from time to time, the work of the ministry attracted and exercised his thoughts in a manner that might be taken to indicate G.o.d's will.

In his perplexity he sought counsel from Wesley. It is not known when, or under what circ.u.mstances, he had become personally known to him, but the letter in which he asks his advice is probably the first he ever wrote to Wesley, and the tone of it suggests that personal acquaintance, if it had begun, was as yet very slight.

"TERN, _Nov. 24th, 1756._

REV. SIR,--

"As I look upon you as my spiritual guide, and cannot doubt of your patience to hear, and your experience to answer, a serious question proposed by any of your people, I freely lay my case before you."

[After giving an account of his early history, and more recent experience, he tells Wesley that he had been offered a t.i.tle to orders, and asks,--]

"Now, sir, the question which I beg you to decide is, whether I must and can make use of that t.i.tle to get into orders. For, with respect to the living, were it vacant, I have no mind to it, because I think I could preach with more fruit in my own country and in my own tongue.

"I am in suspense. On one side my heart tells me I must try, and it tells me so whenever I feel any degree of the love of G.o.d and man; but on the other, when I examine whether I am fit for it, I so plainly see my want of gifts, and especially of that _soul_ of all the labours of a minister of the gospel, _love_, _continual_, _universal_, _flaming love_, that my confidence disappears, I accuse myself of pride to dare to entertain the desire of supporting the ark of the Lord. As I am in both these frames successively, I must own, sir, I do not see plainly which of the two ways before me I can take with safety, and I shall be glad to be ruled by you.... I know how precious is your time; I desire no long answer; _persist_ or _forbear_ will satisfy and influence, sir,

Your unworthy servant,

J. FLETCHER."

No reply to this letter has been preserved, but there can be no doubt as to the nature of Wesley's advice. He recommended Fletcher's being ordained; he probably dissuaded him from returning to Switzerland, and he discouraged the notion of his settling in a parish. He greatly desired to see Fletcher in the itinerant work in which he himself was engaged, the more so as his brother Charles was now withdrawing from it.

On Sunday, March 6th, 1757, Fletcher received deacon's orders from the Bishop of Hereford, and on the following Sunday he was ordained priest by the Bishop of Bangor, at the request of the Bishop of Hereford. The day after receiving priest's orders he was licensed "to perform the office of curate in the parish church of Madeley, in the county of Salop," and "a yearly salary of twenty-five pounds, to be paid quarterly, for serving the same," was a.s.signed to him.

This license to the curacy must not be confounded with his appointment, more than three years afterwards, to the vicarage of Madeley. Fletcher has no history as curate of Madeley. The appointment was in fact a nominal one, for it is tolerably certain that he exercised no spiritual function whatever in Madeley for at least two years after his ordination. The t.i.tle to orders was probably given to him by the Rev.

Rowland Chambre, then Vicar of Madeley, at Mr. Hill's request, with the understanding that the curacy should be only nominal. The position of chaplain and tutor in Mr. Hill's family, though not furnis.h.i.+ng a legal t.i.tle to orders, would be considered equivalent to a cure of souls. The fact that he was ordained deacon and priest on two consecutive Sundays, the customary interval of a year being dispensed with, may be ascribed either to the influence of Mr. Hill, or of Wesley himself; or it may be taken as proof that his character was admittedly high, and that in his examination or interviews with the bishop, he had shown himself exceptionally well qualified, both intellectually and morally.

His connexion with Mr. Hill's family drew to its close. It did not afford him the sphere for Christian work that he desired, ind involved him in occasional embarra.s.sments and difficulties. Mr. Hill was uniformly kind, but he feared that the scandal of Methodism attaching to his tutor would injure him at the next election. The neighbouring clergy for the most part fought shy of Fletcher, so that he had few opportunities of preaching in their churches. But the one compensation for these restrictions was found in the devout retirement he loved so well. He writes to Wesley: "The will of G.o.d be done: I am in His hands; and if He does not call me to so much public duty, I have the more time for study, prayer, and praise." He seems to have been conscious that it was a time of discipline and preparation with him, and until the indications of G.o.d's will were plain, he would not seek release from a position where the providence of G.o.d had placed him.

Meanwhile, as his tutors.h.i.+p became less and less satisfactory as a vocation, his connexion with the Methodists opened up to him new labours and new friends.h.i.+ps. Immediately upon his ordination Fletcher was drawn into the full stream of the Revival, and brought into active a.s.sociation with its leaders. His very first ministerial act, on the day that he was ordained priest, was to a.s.sist Wesley in the administration of the Lord's supper at Snowsfields chapel; and from that time he frequently read prayers and preached in the Methodist chapels in London. He made the acquaintance of Charles Wesley and Whitefield, of the Countess of Huntingdon, of Berridge, Vicar of Everton, of Thomas Walsh, and of some of the devout women who were not least among the glories of early Methodism, including Mary Bosanquet, who, many years afterwards, became his wife. By these and others Fletcher was received with no common welcome. Wesley himself wrote in his "Journal," "When my bodily strength failed, and none in England were able and willing to a.s.sist me, He sent me help from the mountains of Switzerland, and a helpmeet for me in every respect; where could I find such another?" A little later the Countess of Huntingdon wrote to a friend: "I have seen Mr. Fletcher, and was both pleased and refreshed by the interview. He was accompanied by Mr. Wesley, who had frequently mentioned him in terms of high commendation, as had Mr. Whitefield, Mr.

Charles Wesley, and others, so that I was anxious to become acquainted with one so devoted, and who appears to glory in nothing, save in the Cross of our Divine Lord and Master."

Another testimony referring to this time, though written many years later, is that of a Mrs. Crosby, well-known amongst the first Methodists: "I heard this heavenly-minded servant of the Lord preach his first sermon in West Street chapel. I think his text was, 'Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.' His spirit appeared in his whole att.i.tude and action. He could not well find words in the English language to express himself, but he supplied that defect by offering up prayers, tears, and sighs."