“I am by this time grey-headed as well as you, and some of my parishioners tell me that the inroads of time are uncommonly visible upon my face. Indeed, I feel as well as see it myself, and learn what only time, trials, and experience can teach. Should your brother be called to his reward, I would not be free to go to London till you and the preachers had settled all matters. My going just at such a time” [as this] “would carry the appearance of vanity, which I abhor. It would seem as if I wanted to be somebody among the Methodists.
“We here heartily join the prayers of the brethren for your brother, for you, and the Societies. Paper fails, not love. Be careful for nothing. Cast your burden upon the Lord, and He will sustain you. Farewell in Christ.”[[322]]
Two and a half years before this dangerous illness, Wesley had requested Fletcher to be his successor in presiding over the Methodists. Perhaps Charles Wesley was aware of this. At all events, he appears to have wished Fletcher to come to London in the great crisis which had now occurred. Fletcher modestly declined; and, fortunately for both, no successor of Wesley was needed until several years after both were dead.
Fletcher’s “Checks to Antinomianism” were ended. For four years, he had taxed his energies to the utmost; but the work he undertook in 1771 was now nearly concluded. The doctrines of Wesley’s “Minutes” had been carefully explained, minutely defended, and lovingly enforced.
“In his ‘Checks to Antinomianism,’” wrote Wesley, “one knows not which to admire most—the purity of the language, the strength and clearness of the argument, or the mildness and sweetness of the spirit that breathes throughout the whole. Insomuch that I nothing wonder at a serious clergyman, who being resolved to live and die in his own opinion, when he was pressed to read them replied, ‘No, I will never read Mr. Fletcher’s “Checks,” for if I did, I should be of his mind.’”[[323]]
Of course, contrary opinions have been expressed. The author of “The Life and Times of the Countess of Huntingdon” tells his readers that,—
“Fletcher dazzled with eloquence instead of reasoning, and substituted tropes for arguments. He was too loquacious for a deep reasoner, and too impassioned to investigate duly the most profound and awful themes which can occupy the human understanding.”
Isaac Taylor, also, in his “Wesley and Methodism,” takes the same position. He acknowledges that,—
“In a genuine sense, Fletcher was a saint; a saint such as the Church of every age has produced a few samples. Sanctity and purity of manners were his distinctive characteristics. He was as unearthly a being as could tread the earth at all; and his Methodism was Christianity as little lowered by admixture of human infirmity as we may hope to find it anywhere on earth.” But while “as a theologian he possessed acquaintance enough with doctrinal literature and with the Scriptures to give him always a point or two of advantage in relation to his antagonists, he was no such reasoner, he was no such master of Biblical criticism, as might have made it possible for him to overstep the limits of his appointed task, or, as a theological writer, to survive his day.”[[324]]
The first of these critics was too much of a Calvinist to do justice to Fletcher, an Arminian; and it is not rash to say respecting the second, that it is extremely doubtful whether he had carefully perused the writings he condemns. At all events, his assertion that “as a theological writer” Fletcher did not “survive his day,” is utterly untrue. Fletcher’s “Checks” are as much read today as they were a hundred years ago. The demand for them increases almost every year, both in England and in America; and they are found in every land where Methodism has been founded. At the time when they were first published, they occasioned exasperation among the Calvinian Methodists, but that was not the fault of their distinguished author. What was called “bitterness” in Fletcher was not bitterness of temper, but “of unwelcome doctrine, set forth with all the advantages of language, confidence, and argument.” Soon after they were completed, a Dissenting minister at Bristol called upon Fletcher, when, to all human appearance, he was dying, and rudely said, “You had better have been confined to your bed by palsy than have written so many bitter things against the dear children of God.” “My brother,” replied the invalid, “I hope I have not been bitter. Certainly I did not mean to be so; but I wanted more love then, and I feel I want more now.”[[325]] Fletcher’s soft answer silenced his sour assailant, and sent him away, it is to be hoped, a wiser and better man.