During the last six years, Fletcher had most laboriously devoted the whole of the time he could conscientiously spare from the faithful discharge of his parochial duties, to an earnest and elaborate explanation and defence of the Anti-Calvinian doctrines, formally announced by his friend Wesley, at the Conference of 1770. Wesley was without leisure for this. If he had attempted it, he would have been obliged to content himself with the publication of brief, sententious tracts; and this would have been insufficient. Most of the Methodist clergymen of the day, including Whitefield, Hervey, Romaine, Berridge, Shirley, Toplady, and many others, had become sincere and laborious Calvinists. Their publications were widely spread, and their views extensively embraced. Wesley saw and felt that an antidote was needed; and especially as the Countess of Huntingdon had recently opened her college at Trevecca to multiply the number of such ministers. Hence, the declaration of his “Minutes,” and hence, the fierce controversial war that immediately followed. Fletcher had been educated at Geneva, where Calvin had propounded his creed, and his form of Church government. Fletcher was not, professedly, a theological student at Geneva; but he was a regular attendant at Divine services, as well as a diligent reader of the Holy Scriptures, and there can be no doubt that he was, to a considerable extent, even in his youth, acquainted with the Calvinian theology. At all events, when the controversy commenced, in 1770, there was no one, among Wesley’s helpers, so competent to enter the arena, on his behalf, as his friend Fletcher. Hitherto, Fletcher had been accustomed to make little evangelistic tours, to London, to Wales, and to other places; but now, for six years, he confined himself within his own parish, that he might have time to defend Wesley. Up to the present, his letters to his friends had been somewhat numerous; now, to write a letter was one of his rare exercises. He was committed to a great work; and everything, excepting the pastoral duties of his parish, must give way to it. Of the style of his writings, the reader has had numerous specimens. It is always perspicuous, lively, chaste, though occasionally prolix. Many of his figures are apt, striking, convincing; but others would have been more impressive had they been less elaborate. His arguments are fair, legitimate, and generally unanswerable. His spirit, without exception, is saintly. He never becomes personal; never deals in invective; never assails character; never impugns motives. Among the Wesleyan Methodists, he settled for ever all the questions of the Calvinian controversy. For many a long year, Methodist preachers—itinerant and local—drew their arguments and illustrations from his invaluable “Checks;” and, perhaps, it is not too much to say, that not a few of the Calvinists themselves were led by his immortal productions to explain, and modify, and, to some extent, to change their unwarrantable doctrines. To his memory, the Methodist Churches owe undying veneration; for he did for Wesley’s theology what no other man than himself, at that period, could have done. John Wesley travelled, formed Societies, and governed them. Charles Wesley composed unequalled hymns for the Methodists to sing; and John Fletcher, a native of Calvinian Switzerland, explained, elaborated, and defended the doctrines they heartily believed.
Hitherto, his opponents had been Walter Shirley, Richard Hill and his brother Rowland, honest Berridge, and clever but censorious Toplady. The last, for invective, was the worst. Twenty years before, he had heard James Morris, one of Wesley’s itinerants, preach in a barn at Codymain, and soon afterwards was converted. Two years later, while a student in Trinity College, Dublin, he wrote an admirable letter to Wesley, thanking him for his “kind” cautions and advices. When and why he became the bitter foe of Wesley it is difficult to determine. He died on August 11, 1778, in the thirty-eighth year of his age, and was buried in a grave, thirteen feet deep, under the gallery of Whitefield’s chapel, in Tottenham Court Road.
Fletcher’s next antagonist was the Rev. Caleb Evans, a Baptist minister at Bristol; a man of good sense, a diligent student, a faithful pastor, and now thirty-seven years of age. At this period, the English colonists in America were in rebellion. On May 10, 1775, a Congress of the thirteen States met at Philadelphia, and appointed George Washington as their Commander-in-Chief. He took command of the army before Boston, where the English had ten thousand men. A few days after his arrival, the terrible battle at Bunker’s Hill was fought; and a bloody war soon spread over the whole seaboard, and even into Canada, where the American colonists besieged Quebec. In the year 1775, Wesley abridged Dr. Johnson’s famous pamphlet, entitled, “Taxation no Tyranny,” and published it as his own, without the least reference as to its origin. Mr. Evans warmly sympathized with the colonists, and published “A Letter to the Rev. John Wesley, occasioned by his ‘Calm Address.’” Wesley’s reply to this was the republication of his pirated pamphlet, with a preface prefixed, in which he said, “All the arguments” [of Evans] “might be contained in a nutshell.” Political as well as theological controversy is always irritating. Angry tracts and pamphlets, almost without number, were committed to the press; but all of them, except those in which Fletcher was concerned, must here be passed in silence. Fletcher now, strangely enough, turned politician. Early in the year 1776, he published the following: “A Vindication of the Rev. Mr. Wesley’s ‘Calm Address to our American Colonists:’ In some Letters to Mr. Caleb Evans: By John Fletcher, Vicar of Madeley, Salop. London: Printed and sold at the Foundery.” 12mo, 70 pp.[[343]]
In a letter to Joseph Benson, he said:—
“I have unaccountably launched into Christian politics; a branch of divinity too much neglected by some and too much attended to by others. If you have seen my ‘Vindication of Mr. Wesley’s Calm Address,’ and can make sense of that badly printed piece, I shall be thankful for your very dispraise.”
To James Ireland, Esq., he wrote on February 3, 1776:—
“My little political piece is published in London. You thank me for it beforehand; I believe they are the only thanks I shall have. It is well you sent them before you read the book; and yet, whatever contempt it brings upon me, I still think I have written the truth. If I have been wrong in writing, I hope I shall not be so excessively wrong as not to be thankful for any reproof candidly levelled at what I have written. I prepare myself to be like my Lord in my little measure; I mean, to be ‘Despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with griefs,’—most reviled for what I mean best.”
Evidence will soon be adduced that Fletcher’s apprehensions of coming reproach were realized.
It may fairly be doubted whether Wesley and Fletcher acted wisely in rushing into the fierce political strife that then existed. Their motives were pure; and, perhaps, Mr. Benson, living at the time, and a competent observer of men and things, was correct when he said,—
“Mr. Fletcher’s publications upon the question which divided Great Britain and her Colonies, as well as Mr. Wesley’s ‘Calm Address,’ certainly were of great use; not indeed to prevent the continuation and further progress of the war, and stop the effusion of blood abroad, but to allay the spirits of disloyalty and insurrection which were beginning to show themselves at home.”