[222]. Wesley says he “spent the day in fasting and prayer.” (Wesley’s Works, vol. vii., p. 416.)
[223]. Benson’s Life, by Macdonald.
[224]. After many unhappy contentions, and much forbearance on Wesley’s part, Thomas Maxfield seceded from Wesley in 1763. Maxfield has been far more highly honoured in Methodist histories and biographies than his merits warranted.
[225]. I have failed in my endeavour to ascertain what is meant by the “Brecknock division.” There can be no doubt, however, that Wesley met with great annoyance in that part of Wales. Previous to the opening of Trevecca College, he wrote:—
“1767. September 2.—I found the work of God in Pembrokeshire had been exceedingly hindered, chiefly by Mr. Davies’s preachers, who had continually inveighed against ours, and thereby frightened abundance of people from hearing or coming near them. This had sometimes provoked them to retort, which always made a bad matter worse. The advice, therefore, which I gave them was:—1. Let all the people sacredly abstain from backbiting, tale-bearing, evil-speaking. 2. Let all our preachers abstain from returning railing for railing, either in public or in private, as well as from disputing. 3. Let them never preach controversy, but plain, practical, and experimental religion.”
A year and a half after Fletcher left Trevecca, Wesley wrote again in his journal:—
“1772. August 14.—About noon, at the request of my old friend Howell Harris, I preached at Trevecca, on the strait gate, and we found our hearts knit together as at the beginning. He said, ‘I have borne with these pert, ignorant young men, vulgarly called students, till I cannot in conscience bear any longer. They preach barefaced reprobation, and so broad antinomianism, that I have been constrained to oppose them to the face, even in the public congregation.’ It is no wonder they should preach thus. What better can be expected from raw lads of little understanding, little learning, and no experience?”
[226]. This letter is inserted in the “Life and Times of Wesley,” where it was published for the first time. It is reproduced here, because Fletcher’s life would not be complete without it.—L. T.
[227]. “Life and Times of Wesley,” vol. iii., p. 93.
[228]. The letter of the Countess, dated “August 2, 1771,” in substance was an apology for the apparently presumptuous way in which she and her friends had proposed to invade Wesley’s Conference; accompanied with an excuse founded on the fact that they regarded Wesley’s “Minutes,” of 1770, as “repugnant to Scripture, the whole plan of man’s salvation under the new covenant of grace, and also to the clear meaning of our Established Church, as well as to that of all other Protestant Churches.” Shirley’s letter was to the same effect. (See Shirley’s “Narrative of the Principal Circumstances relative to the Rev Mr. Wesley’s late Conference, held in Bristol, August 6, 1771.”)