Fletcher of Madeley

by Frederic W. Macdonald

Sept. 17th, 1778.—"One of our ministers being ill, I ventured a second time into the pulpit last Sunday; and the Sunday before I preached six miles off to two thousand people in a jail-yard, where they were come to see a poor murderer two days before his execution. I was a little abused by the Bailiff on the occasion, and refused the liberty of attending the poor man on the scaffold, where he was to be broken on the wheel. I hope he died penitent."

Feb. 2nd, 1779.—"I am better, thank God! and ride out every day when the slippery roads will permit me to venture without the risk of breaking my horse's legs, and my own neck. You will ask me how I have spent my time. I pray, have patience, rejoice, and write when I can. I saw wood in the house when I cannot go out, and eat grapes, of which I have always a basket by me....

"The truths I chiefly insist upon, when I talk to the people who will hear me, are those which I feed upon myself, as my daily bread: God, our Maker and Preserver, though invisible, is here and everywhere. He is our chief good, because all beauty and all goodness centres in and flows from Him. He is especially love: and love in us, being His image, is the sum and substance of all moral and spiritual excellence,—of all true and lasting bliss. In Adam we are all estranged from love and from God; but the second Adam, Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, is come to make us know and enjoy again our God as the God of love and the chief good. All who receive Jesus receive power to become the sons of God, etc., etc."

March 7th, 1780.—"I am sorry the building has come to so much more than I intended; but as the mischief is done, it is a matter to exercise patience, resignation, and self-denial; and it will be a caution in future. I am going to sell part of my little estate here to discharge the debt. I had laid by £50 to print a small work, which I wanted to distribute here; but, as I must be just before I presume to offer that mite to the God of truth, I lay by the design, and shall send that sum to Mr. York. Money is so scarce here at this time that I shall sell at very great loss; but necessity and justice are two great laws which must be obeyed. As I design on my return to England to pinch until I have got rid of this debt, I may go and live in one of the cottages belonging to the vicar, if we could let the vicarage for a few pounds."

Sept. 15th, 1780.—"There is little genuine piety in these parts: nevertheless, there is yet some of the form of it; so far as to go to the Lord's table regularly four times a year. There meet the adulterers, the drunkards, the swearers, the infidels, and even the materialists. They have no idea of the double damnation that awaits hypocrites. They look upon partaking that sacrament as a ceremony enjoined by the magistrate."

Feb. 14th, 1781.—"My friend Ireland invites me to join him in the south of France, and I long to see whether I could not have more liberty to preach the word among Papists than among Protestants. But it is so little that I can do, that I doubt much whether it is worth while going so far upon so little a chance. If I were stronger, and had more time, the fear of being hanged should not detain me."

It had occurred to Fletcher during his residence in Nyon that he might serve the cause of religion in Switzerland with his pen, seeing that the state of his health, and the opposition of persons in authority, made it impossible for him to preach the gospel, as it was in his heart to do. To awaken the clergy, to rouse them from their worldliness and scepticism, and bring them to some acquaintance with true religion, seemed of all things the most desirable. Humanly speaking, there was little hope for the Church in Switzerland until there was, at least, the leaven of an earnest ministry. To his friend and curate at Madeley, Mr. Greaves, he wrote: "There is occasion and great need to bear a testimony against the faults of the clergy here; and if I cannot do it from the pulpit, I must try to do it from the press. Their canons, which were composed by two hundred and thirty pastors at the time of the Reformation, are so spiritual and apostolic that I design to translate them into English, if I am spared."

It does not appear that this design was carried out, but meanwhile Fletcher was preparing a practical treatise on the "Pastoral Character," which he hoped to publish before leaving the country. It grew upon his hands into a lengthy and elaborate work. His plan was to exhibit at one view the character of the primitive Christian, and of the apostolic minister, as exemplified in the Apostle Paul. It was written in French, but was still unfinished when he returned to England, and the manuscript was laid aside, with the intention of translating and preparing it for the press when circumstances should allow. The convenient season, however, did not come, and it was not until after his death that the manuscript was found—portions of it from time to time,—obviously needing revision at the author's hand. The task of translating and editing was performed by the Rev. Joshua Gilpin, and his version of "The Portrait of St. Paul" is the only one that has ever appeared. No mode of publication could well be more disadvantageous to a writer, and this should be borne in mind in estimating its value. Mr. Gilpin remarks that "the manuscript was so incorrect and confused as frequently to stagger the resolution of the translator"; and as his object was rather to produce an edifying work than to edit with precision Fletcher's literary remains, it is probable that he filled up the gaps and elaborated the hints which he found in Fletcher's papers. This would in part account for the diffuseness which characterises "The Portrait of St. Paul." The tendency, so frequently discernible in Fletcher's writings, is here most conspicuous. In the first division of the work the moral character of St. Paul is delineated under no less than forty "Traits," each one having a chapter to itself, the chapters being numbered successively Trait 1, Trait 2, and so on, to forty. Had Fletcher completed this treatise, and published it himself, it is reasonable to believe that his own literary experience or the advice of his friends would have led him to group these numerous details under fewer heads, and in other ways give greater unity to the whole. There is hardly a chapter that does not show the writer's spiritual insight and experience, and may not be read with profit, even by those who are acquainted with the best works of pastoral theology; but the cataloguing of moral features is carried to a fatiguing length, and the portrait which it was intended to exhibit is in danger of disappearing in the process of linked and long-drawn description.

Even in its present form it is not difficult to see that the "Portrait of St. Paul" was written by one who had Swiss readers in view. The authors most frequently quoted are Ostervald, professor and pastor at Neufchatel, whose "Exercice du Ministère Sacré" was published in 1739, and Roques, formerly minister of the French congregation at Basle, whose "Pasteur Evangélique," published in 1723, was still a popular work. It was an advantage for Fletcher to be able to appeal to "such excellent and learned divines as Mons. Ostervald and Mons. Roques" in setting forth the character and calling of the Christian minister.

The third and concluding portion of the work is "An Essay on the Connexion of Doctrines and Morality." It might almost be considered a separate and independent work. Its object is to show the insufficiency of natural religion and philosophy to produce true goodness. We are reminded on every page that it was written in the country of Rousseau's birth and of Voltaire's adoption, at a time when the wit of the one, the sentiment of the other, and the principles of both these philosophers and men of letters, were of paramount influence in Switzerland. Voltaire and Rousseau died in the year 1778, while Fletcher was residing at Nyon, and he had ample opportunity of observing the extent to which both clergy and laity had come under their spell. That influence was, in Fletcher's judgment, the cause of grievous injury to religion and morals. A loose, easy-going, yet confident deism seemed almost to have superseded Christianity. Even amongst the clergy the truth of revelation was denied, or its importance disparaged. The doctrines of revealed religion were ridiculed as mysterious and incredible, or rejected as having no practical bearing. The religion of nature had a showy and pretentious side for those who aspired to the dignity of philosophers, and was easily reconcilable with selfishness, vanity, and licentiousness alike in its more, and in its less, illustrious professors.