Mr. Fletcher’s connection with Trevecca College terminated in his resigning, in consequence of a dispute which arose out of certain minutes by the Wesleyan Conference in opposition to the doctrine of predestination, first brought into prominence by the great Geneva reformer, Calvin. Lady Huntingdon invited all in connection with the college to write their sentiments respecting them, adding a strong hint that all who did not repudiate the views contained in Mr. Wesley’s minutes must prepare to quit. Mr. Fletcher wrote strongly in favour of his friend Wesley, and resigned his appointment. These expressions of his views brought him in opposition to his patrons, the Hills, two of whom, Richard (afterwards Sir Richard) and Rowland, used their pens in defence of Mr. Fletcher’s opponent, a brother-clergyman named Toplady, then the great champion of Calvinism. Mr. Wesley, who had laid the train which led to the explosion, either from want of time or inclination to remain on the field, left two of his preachers to sustain the shock, and these proving unequal to the task, Mr. Fletcher was left to fight the battle single-handed. This he did in a series of cleverly-written works, entitled “Checks to Antinomianism,” in speaking of one of which in a letter to a friend, dated March 20, 1774:, he says:—“I do not repent of my having engaged in this controversy; for though I doubt my little publication cannot reclaim those who are confirmed in believing the lie of the day, yet it may here and there stop one from swallowing it all, or at least from swallowing it so deeply.” Two years after he says—“I have almost run my race of scribbling; and I have preached as much as I could, though to little purpose; but I must not complain. If one person has received good by my ten years’ labour it is an honour for which I cannot be too thankful, if my mind were as low as it should be.”
A not very friendly critic, the Christian Observer, speaking some time afterwards of this discussion, says:—
“We have no hesitation in saying that we believe Mr. Fletcher’s motives in writing them to have been pure and upright. We also think that in his manner of conducting the controversy, now happily almost forgotten, he had decidedly the advantage of his antagonists. He was an acute and animated disputant; a brilliant imagination rendered his argumentation imposing, splendid, and dazzling, while it enabled him to paint the doctrines of his adversaries in the darkest and most odious colours; and whatever may have been the merits of the cause which he defended,—into these we do not mean to enter,—he was undoubtedly superior in talents and learning to all his opponents.”
Mr. Wesley says:—“One knows not which to admire most, the purity of the language (such as scarce any foreigner wrote before); the strength and clearness of the argument; or the mildness and sweetness of the spirit that breathes throughout the whole.” Those who read these discussions in the present day feel surprised at the warmth and bitterness exhibited by the antagonists, but allowance must be made for the temper of the times.
Mr. Fletcher as a Politician.
As in the religious controversy, so in the political dispute which arose out of the American War of Independence, Mr. Fletcher came forth as the champion of his friend Mr. Wesley, who having provoked his antagonists, deputed the task of answering them to the Madeley vicar, and the friends of both must now, we imagine, regret that either of them took up their pens in such a cause. It is not too much to say that both entered the lists, if not on the side of the oppressor, at any rate as against that spirit of liberty for which a Washington and a Franklin fought, and which had been implanted on New England soil by colonists to whom a Stuart king had made the old country unsafe longer to live in. The mistake was perhaps the result of that harsh-drawn line by which intensely devout minds like those of Mr. Wesley and Mr. Fletcher are apt to separate things religious and political, and which not unfrequently leads to an insensibility to public injustice and crime, even, strangely disproportioned to the zeal displayed in behalf of some dogmatic and invisible subtleties of creed. Dr. Arnold and others since Mr. Fletcher’s day have done much to correct the notion which removes religion and God from politics, and which sets up in sharp opposition the earthly and heavenly relations of men.
Mr. Fletcher as a Descriptive Writer.
It may afford a fair specimen of Mr. Fletcher’s dispassionate descriptive style of writing, and at the same time serve to commemorate a notable phenomenon much talked of at that time, to quote his account of the great landslip at the Birches, just on the borders of the parishes of Madeley and Buildwas.
“When I went to the spot,” says Mr. Fletcher, “the first thing that struck me was the destruction of the little bridge that separated the parish of Madeley from that of Buildwas, and the total disappearing of the turnpike road to Buildwas bridge, instead of which nothing presented itself to my view but a confused heap of bushes, and huge clods of earth tumbled one over another. The river also wore a different aspect; it was shallow, turbid, noisy, boisterous, and came down from a different point. Whether I considered the water or the land the scene appeared to me entirely new, and as I could not fancy myself in another part of the country, I concluded that the God of nature had shaken his providential iron rod over the subverted spot before me. Following the track made by a great number of spectators, who came already from the neghbouring parishes, I climbed over the ruins and came to a field well grown with rye-grass, where the ground was greatly cracked in several places, and where large turfs, some entirely, others half turned up exhibited the appearance of straight or crooked furrows, imperfectly formed by a plough drawn at a venture. Getting from that field over the hedge, into a part of the road which was yet visible, I found it raised in one place, sunk in another, concave in a third, hanging on one side in a fourth, and contracted as if some uncommon force had pressed the two hedges together. But the higher part of it surprised me most, and brought directly to my remembrance those places of mount Vesuvius where the solid stony lava has been strongly marked by repeated earthquakes, for the hard-beaten gravel that formed the surface of the road was broken every way into huge masses, partly detatched from each other, with deep apertures between them exactly like the shattered lava. This striking likeness of circumstances made me conclude that the similar effect might proceed from the same cause, namely, a strong convulsion on the surface if not in the bowels of the earth. Going a little farther towards Buildwas I found that the road was again totally lost for a considerable space, having been overturned, absorbed, or tumbled with the hedges’ that bounded it to a considerable distance towards the river; this part of the desolation appeared then to me inexpressibly dreadful. Between a shattered field and the river there was on that morning a bank on which besides a great deal of underwood grew twenty fine large oaks, this wood shot with such violence into the Severn before it that it forced the water in great columns a considerable height, like mighty fountains, and gave the overflowing river a retrograde motion. This is not the only accident that happened to the Severn; for near the Grove the channel which was chiefly of a soft blue rock burst in ten thousand pieces, and rose perpendicularly about ten yards, heaving up the immense quantity of water and the shoals of fishes that were therein. Among the rubbish at the bottom of the river, which was very deep in that place, there were one or two huge stones and a large piece of timber, or an oak tree, which from time immemorial had lain partly buried in the mud, I suppose in consequence of some flood; the stones and tree were thrown up as if they had been only a pebble and a stick, and are now at some distance from the river, many feet higher than the surface of it. Ascending from the ruins of the road I came to those of a barn, which after travelling many yards towards the river had been absorbed in a chasm where the shattered roof was yet visible. Next to these remains of the barn, and partly parallel with the river, was a long hedge which had been torn from a part of it yet adjoining the garden hedge, and had been removed above forty yards downward together with some large trees that were in it and the land that it enclosed. The tossing, tearing, and shifting of so many acres of land below, was attended with the formation of stupendous chasms above. At some distance above, near the wood which crowns that desolated spot, another chasm, or rather a complication of chasms excited my admiration; it is an assemblage of chasms, one of which that seems to terminate the desolation to the north-east, runs some hundred yards towards the river and Madeley Wood; it looked like the deep channel of some great serpentine river dried up, whose little islands, fords, and hollows appear without a watery veil. This long chasm at the top seems to be made up of two or three that run into each other, and their conjunction when it is viewed from a particular point exhibits the appearance of a ruined fortress whose ramparts have been blown up by mines that have done dreadful execution, and yet have spared here and there a pyramid of earth, or a shattered tower by which the spectators can judge of the nature and solidity of the demolished bulwark. Fortunately there was on the devoted spot but one house, inhabited by two poor countrymen and their families; it stands yet, though it has removed about a yard from its former situation. The morning in which the desolation happened, Samuel Wilcocks, one of those countrymen, got up about four o’clock, and opening the window to see if the weather was fair he took notice of a small crack in the earth about four or five inches wide, and observed the above mentioned field of corn heaving up and rolling about like the waves of the sea; the trees by the motion of the ground waved also, as if they had been blown with the wind, though the air was calm and serene; the river Severn, which for some days had overflowed its banks, was also very much agitated and seemed to turn back to its source. The man being astonished at such a sight, rubbed his eyes, supposing himself not quite awake, and being soon convinced that destruction stalked about he alarmed his wife, and taking the children in their arms they went out of the house as fast as they could, accompanied by the other man and his wife. A kind Providence directed their flight, for instead of running eastward across the fields that were just going to be overthrown, they fled westward into a wood that had little share in the destruction. When they were about twenty yards from the house they perceived a great crack run very quick up the ground from the river; immediately the land behind them with the trees and hedges moved towards the Severn with great swiftness and an uncommon noise, which Samuel Wilcocks compared to a large flock of sheep running swiftly by him. It was then chiefly that desolation expanded her wings over the devoted spot and the Birches saw a momentary representation of a partial chaos! then nature seemed to have forgotten her laws: trees became itinerant!—those that were at a distance from the river advanced towards it, while the submerged oak broke out of its watery confinements and by rising many feet recovered a place on dry land; the solid road was swept away as its dust had been on a stormy day;—then probably the rocky bottom of the Severn emerged, pushing towards heaven astonished shoals of fishes and hogsheads of water innumerable;—the wood like an embattled body of vegetable combatants stormed the bed of the overflowing river, and triumphantly waved its green colours over its recoiling flood;—fields became moveable,—nay, they fled when none pursued, and as they fled they rent the green carpets that covered them in a thousand pieces;—in a word, dry land exhibited the dreadful appearance of a sea-storm. Solid earth as if it had acquired the fluidity of water tossed itself into massy waves, which rose or sunk at the beck of him who raised the tempest; and what is most astonishing, the stupendous hollow of one of those waves ran for nearly a quarter of a mile through rocks and a stony soil with as much ease as if dry earth, stones, and rocks had been a part of the liquid element. Soon after the river was stopt, Samuel Cookson, a farmer who lives a quarter of a mile below the Birches, on the same side of the river, was much terrified by a dust of wind that beat against his windows as if shot had been thrown against it, but his fright greatly increased when getting up to see if the flood that was over his ground had abated he perceived that all the water was from his fields, and that scarce any remained in the Severn. He called up his family, ran to the river, and finding that the river was dammed up, he made the best of his way to alarm the inhabitants of Buildwas, the next village above, which he supposed would soon be under water. He was happily mistaken, providence just prepared a way for their escape; the Severn, notwithstanding a considerable flood which at that time rendered it doubly rapid and powerful, having met with two dreadful shocks, the one from her rising bed and the other from the intruding wood, could do nothing but foam and turn back with impetuosity. The ascending and descending streams conflicted about Buildwas bridge; the river sensibly rose for some miles back, and continued rising till just as it was near entering the houses at Buildwas it got a vent through the fields on the right, and after spreading far and near over them collected all its might to assault its powerful aggressor, I mean the Grove, that had so unexpectedly turned it out of the bed which it had enjoyed for countless ages. Sharp was the attack, but the resistance was yet more vigorous, and the Severn, repelled again and again, was obliged to seek its old empty bed, by going the shortest way to the right, and the moment it found it again it precipitated therein with a dreadful roar, and for a time formed a considerable cataract with inconceivable fury, as if it wanted to be avenged on the first thing that came in its way, began to tear and wash away a fine rich meadow opposite to the Grove, and there in a few hours worked itself a new channel about three hundred yards long, through which a barge from Shrewsbury ventured three or four days after, all wonder at the strangement of the overthrow.”
Mr. Fletcher added:—“My employment and taste leading me more to search out the mysteries of heaven than to scrutinize the phenomena of the earth, and to point at the wonders of grace rather than those of nature; I leave the decision of the question about the slip and the earthquake to some abler philosopher.”