“With respect to my body, I know not what to say; but the physician says he hopes I shall do well; and so I hope, and believe too, whether I recover my strength or not. Health and sickness, life and death, are best when the Lord sends them. All things work together for good to those that love God.
“I am forbid preaching; but, blessed be God! I am not forbid, by my heavenly Physician, to pray, believe, and love. This is a sweet work, which heals, delights, and strengthens.
“I hope you bear me on your hearts, as I do you on mine. My wish for you is that you may be possessors of an inward kingdom of grace; that you may so hunger and thirst after righteousness as to be filled. Oh! be hearty in the cause of religion. Be humbly zealous for your own salvation, and for God’s glory; nor forget to care for the salvation of each other. Keep yourselves in the love of God; and keep one another by example, reproof, exhortation, encouragement, social prayer, and a faithful use of all the means of grace. Use yourselves to bow at the feet of Christ. Go to Him continually for the holy anointing of His Spirit, who will be a Teacher always near, always with you and in you. If you have that inward Instructor, you will suffer no material loss when your outward teachers are removed. Make the most of dear Mr. Greaves[[367]] while you have him. While you have the light of God’s word, believe in the light, that you may be children of the light, fitted for the kingdom of eternal light, where I charge you to meet your affectionate brother and minister,
“J. Fletcher.”[[368]]
To Charles Perronet, son of the venerable Vicar of Shoreham, Fletcher wrote:—
“Bristol, July 12, 1776.
“My Very Dear Brother,—I gladly thank you for your last favour. The Lord keeps me hanging by a thread. He weighs me in the balance for life and death; I trust Him for the choice. He knows, far better than I, what is best; and I leave all to His unerring wisdom. I am calm, and wait, with submission, for what the Lord will say concerning me. I wait to be baptized into all His fulness, and trust the word—the word of His grace.”[[369]]
Exactly a month after the date of this letter, holy Charles Perronet himself fell asleep in Jesus. “My dear Charles,” wrote his venerable father, “after wearing out a weakly constitution in the most unwearied endeavours to bring many to Christ, breathed out his pious soul in the remarkable words of his dear Lord, ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.’” “I have uninterrupted fellowship with God,” cried the dying saint; “and Christ is all in all to me.”[[370]] As soon as Fletcher heard of the death of this godly man, he wrote to the bereaved father as follows:—
“Methinks I see you, right honoured Sir, mounted, as another Moses, on the top of Pisgah, and through the telescope of faith descrying the promised land; or, rather, in the present instance, I observe you, like another Joshua, on the banks of Jordan, viewing all Israel, with your son among them, passing over the river to their great possessions. Permit me, therefore, in consideration of your years and office, to exclaim, in the language of young Elisha to his ancient seer, ‘My father! My father! The chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof.’
“‘There, there they are, and there is your son!