“Some time after this, he was favoured with a further manifestation of the love of God, so powerful, that, he said, it appeared to him as if his body and soul would be separated. Now all his desires centred in one, that of devoting himself to the service of his precious Master, which he thought he could best do by entering into holy orders.”[[8]]
To complete the accounts of Fletcher’s conversion, in 1755, an extract from another letter must be added. In that year, writing to his brother, he insisted on the vanity of earthly pursuits, and then gave the following description of the change that had taken place in himself:—
“I speak from experience. I have been successively deluded by all those desires, and sometimes I have been the sport of them all at once. This will appear incredible, except to those who have discovered that the heart of unregenerate man is nothing more than a chaos of obscurity and a mass of contradictions. If you have any acquaintance with yourself, you will readily subscribe to this description of the human heart. Every unconverted man must necessarily be either a voluptuary, a worldly-minded person, or a pharisaical philosopher: or, perhaps, like myself, he may be all of these at the same time; and, what is still more extraordinary, he may be so not only without believing, but even without once suspecting it; indeed, nothing is more common among men than an entire blindness to their own real characters. How often have I placed my happiness in mere chimeras! How often have I grounded my vain hope upon imaginary foundations! I have been constantly employed in framing designs for my own felicity; but my disappointments have been as frequent and various as my projects.
“If, hitherto, my dear brother, you have beguiled yourself with prospects of the same visionary nature, never expect to be more successful in your future pursuits. One labour will only succeed another, making way for continual discontent and chagrin. Open your heart, and there you will discover the source of that painful inquietude to which, by your own confession, you have been long a prey. Examine its secret recesses, and you will discover there sufficient proof of the following truths: ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked;’ ‘All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;’ ‘The thoughts of man’s heart are only evil, and that continually;’ ‘The natural man understandeth not the things of the Spirit of God.’ On the discovery of these and other important truths, you will be convinced that man is an apostate being, composed of a sensual, rebellious body, and a soul immersed in pride, self-love, and ignorance; nay more, you will perceive it a physical impossibility that man should ever become truly happy till he is cast, as it were, into a new mould, and created a second time.
“For my own part, when I first began to know myself, I saw, I felt that man is an undefinable animal, partly of a bestial and partly of an infernal nature. The discovery shocked my self-love, and filled me with the utmost horror. I endeavoured for some time to throw a palliating disguise over the wretchedness of my condition, but the impression it had already made upon my heart was too deep to be erased. It was to no purpose that I reminded myself of the morality of my conduct; it was in vain that I recollected the many encomiums that had been passed upon my early piety and virtue; and it was to little avail that I sought to cast a mist before my eyes by reasonings like these: ‘If conversion implies a total change, who has been converted in these days? Why dost thou imagine thyself worse than thou really art? Thou art a believer in God and in Christ; thou art a Christian; thou hast injured no person; thou art neither a drunkard nor an adulterer; thou hast discharged thy duties not only in a general way, but with more than ordinary exactness; thou art a strict attendant at church; thou art accustomed to pray more regularly than others, and frequently with a good degree of fervour; make thyself perfectly easy; moreover, Jesus Christ has suffered for thy sins, and His merit will supply everything lacking on thy part.’
“It was by reasonings of this nature that I endeavoured to conceal[conceal] from myself the deplorable state of my heart; and I am ashamed, my dear brother, that I suffered myself so long to be deluded by the artifices of Satan. God Himself has invited me; a cloud of apostles, prophets, and martyrs have exhorted me; and my own conscience, animated by those sparks of grace which are latent in every heart, has urged me to enter in at the strait gate; but, notwithstanding all this, a subtle temper, a deluding world, and a deceived heart have constantly turned the balance, for above these twenty years, in favour of the broad way. I have passed the most lovely part of my life in the service of these tyrannical masters, and am ready to declare in the face of the universe that all my reward has consisted in disquietude and remorse. Happy had I listened to the earliest invitations of grace, and broken the iron yoke from off my neck.”[[9]]
These extracts are long, but they are important. They contain all the known facts connected with Fletcher’s conversion.
In writing to his brother, Fletcher remarked,—“At eighteen years of age, I devoted as much time as I could spare to read the prophecies of the Holy Bible;” and it is a curious fact that, in the year of his conversion, he wrote a long letter to Wesley, in which he gave a synopsis of the writings of “a great divine abroad,” who had “spent fifty years in making himself perfectly master of the Oriental languages, and in comparing and explaining the various predictions scattered in the Old and New Testaments.” Fletcher was well acquainted with this gentleman, and had many times conversed with him on the subjects of his lifelong study. Substantially, the young man had adopted the aged man’s views; and now, in a condensed form (filling, however, nineteen octavo printed pages), he presented them to Wesley. At the time, terrific wars were being waged, and, a month before the date of Fletcher’s letter, the great earthquake at Lisbon had occurred. At such seasons, devout men almost instinctively begin to study prophecies, and hence no wonder that Fletcher now felt more than ordinarily interested in what, “for some years, had often been the subject of his meditations.” He believed that “the grand catastrophe of God’s drama drew near apace,” and gave his reasons for such belief by referring first to Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, “which is a rough sketch of the world’s four universal revolutions;” secondly, to Daniel’s vision of the four beasts; and thirdly, to Daniel’s vision of the ram and he-goat, and the two thousand and three hundred days, at the end of which the “sanctuary” was to “be cleansed.” Fletcher, by elaborate calculations, shows that this cleansing was to take place between the years 1750 and 1770, and the following extract will indicate what, in his opinion, the cleansing meant:—
“God is now working such a work as has not been seen since the Apostles’ days. He has sent some chosen servants of His, both in these kingdoms and abroad, who, by the manifest assistance of the Holy Spirit, have removed the filthy doctrine of justification by works, and the outward Christless performance of moral duties, which pollute the sanctuary and make it an abomination to the Lord. The Holy Ghost is given, and the love of God is shed abroad in the hearts of believers as in the days of old. I own that the cleansing is but begun; but this revolution[[10]] may, in all probability, be the forerunner of a greater. God has called; a few have obeyed His call. The generality still shut their eyes and ears against the tender invitations of their Lord, and continue to pollute the sanctuary and to look on the blood of the Lamb as an unholy thing. Shall not God carry on His work? Shall the creature still resist the Creator? and the arm of flesh be stronger than the living God? Not so. He will not always strive with obdurate hearts. What the gentle breathings of His Spirit cannot perform, He will do by war, sword and fire, plague and famine, tribulation and anguish. He is going to gird on His sword, and His right hand shall teach Him terrible things. Nations refuse the sceptre of His mercy; what remains, then, but to rule them with an iron sceptre, and break them in pieces like a potter’s vessel?”
Fletcher concludes by arguing in favour of the doctrine, that, long before the general judgment Christ will appear on earth a second time to work out His great redeeming purposes.