“At the New Room in the Horse Fair,
“Bristol.”
Thus did these earnest first Methodists watch over themselves with a godly jealousy; and thus, in addition to the Christian fellowship in their weekly class-meetings, did they tell their religious experience to each other in epistolary correspondence. To this fact, pre-eminently, Methodism is indebted for its rich biographies.
Immediately after the date of the above letter, Fletcher must have set out for Bristol, for Wesley writes:—
“In the following week” (the third week in October), “I met Mr. Fletcher, and the other preachers that were in the house at Bristol, and spent a considerable time in close conversation on the head of Christian Perfection. I afterwards wrote down the general propositions wherein we all agreed.”[[36]]
No doubt, these propositions were substantially the same as those which Wesley, two months before, had presented to his Annual Conference, and which were:—
1. That Christian Perfection does not “exclude all infirmities, ignorance, and mistake.”
2. That those who think they have attained Christian Perfection, in speaking their own experience, should “speak with great wariness, and with the deepest humility and self-abasement before God.”
3. That young preachers, especially, should “speak of Perfection in public, not too minutely or circumstantially, but rather in general and scriptural terms.”
4. That Christian Perfection “implies the loving God with all the heart, so that every evil temper is destroyed, and every thought, and word, and work springs from, and is conducted to the end by, the pure love of God and our neighbour.”[[37]]