Wesley's Designated Successor: The Life, Letters, and Literary Labours of the Rev. John William Fletcher, Vicar of Maddey, Shropshire
9781465666772
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
“Jean Guillaume de la Flechere,” wrote Robert Southey, “was a man of rare talents, and rarer virtue. No age or country has ever produced a man of more fervent piety, or more perfect charity; no Church has ever possessed a more apostolic minister. He was a man of whom Methodism may well be proud, as the most able of its defenders; and whom the Church of England may hold in remembrance, as one of the most pious and excellent of her sons.” “Fletcher was a saint,” said Isaac Taylor, “as unearthly a being as could tread the earth at all.” “Fletcher,” remarked Robert Hall, “is a seraph who burns with the ardour of divine love. Spurning the fetters of mortality, he almost habitually seems to have anticipated the rapture of the beatific vision.” Dr. Dixon, one of the greatest of Methodist preachers, observed, “I conceive Fletcher to be the most holy man who has been upon earth since the apostolic age.” No apology is needed for publishing the life of such a man, unless it can be shown that a life worthy of him is already in existence. Excepting the brief and exceedingly imperfect biography by the Rev. Robert Cox, in 1822, only two Lives of Fletcher have been published since his death, ninety-seven years ago; namely, Wesley’s in 1786, and Benson’s in 1804. It is true that, in 1790, the Rev. Joshua Gilpin, Vicar of Rockwardine, appended twenty-nine biographical “Notes” to different chapters of Fletcher’s “Portrait of St. Paul;” but the facts they contained, in addition to those which Wesley had already given, were not many. A year later, in 1791, the Rev. Melville Horne, Curate of Madeley, published “Posthumous Pieces of the late Rev. John William De La Flechere,” a volume of 435 pages, nearly 400 of which are filled with Fletcher’s Letters to his friends. This volume has been of great service to me in the present work. Many quotations are made from it, and are indicated by the footnotes, “Letters, 1791.” When Fletcher died, some of his admirers wished Mr. Ireland to be his biographer; others desired Fletcher’s widow to undertake the task. Both of them judiciously declined. Wesley was then fixed upon. He asked Mr. Ireland to supply him with materials, but Mr. Ireland refused: Mrs. Fletcher, however, rendered him important help. In unpublished letters to Sarah Crosby, she writes:— “Mr. Ireland knew and loved my dear husband as scarcely any other person did; and if he chooses to print a journal of their travels and of the great spiritual labours of which he was an eye-witness, it would not be wrong. But this is not his intention. He only wishes to gather materials for me. With a good deal of labour, I have collected some sweet fragments, on different subjects, from little pocket-books, but I have handed them to Mr. Wesley, who, however, tells me he has done nothing towards the Life, and that he has enough to occupy his time for a year to come. Indeed, he seems to be in doubt whether he will be able to write the Life at all. I hope the accounts I have given him will not be shortened; if they be, I shall repent that I did not print them myself.”
