“The following work was begun, and nearly completed, in the course of Mr. Fletcher’s last residence at Nyon; where it formed a valuable part of his private labours during a long and painful confinement from public duty.[[500]] On his return to England, he suffered the manuscript to lie by him, intending, at his leisure, to translate and prepare it for the press. After his decease, Mrs. Fletcher discovered it, and the translator, finding it a work of no common importance, was readily induced to render it into English. The Portrait of St. Paul was originally intended for publication in the author’s native country, to which its arguments and quotations apply with peculiar propriety. It contains Mr. Fletcher’s last and best thoughts upon some of the most important subjects that can occupy the human mind.”
Unfortunately, Fletcher’s “Portrait of St. Paul” has, at the present day, but few readers. At the beginning of the century, it was one of the text-books of the Methodist itinerant preachers; and, even within the last forty years, the Methodist Magazine spoke of it as an “admirable work” and an “inestimable volume.”[[501]] Methodists, now-a-days, too often prefer ornament to truth.
The traits of St. Paul upon which Fletcher descants are the following: his early piety; his Christian piety; his intimate union with Christ by faith; his extraordinary vocation to the holy ministry, and in what that ministry chiefly consists; his entire devotion to Jesus Christ; his strength and his arms; his power to bind, to loose, and to bless in the name of the Lord; the earnestness with which he began and continued to fill up the duties of his vocation; the manner in which he divided his time between prayer, preaching, and thanksgiving; the fidelity with which he announced the severe threatenings and consolatory promises of the Gospel; his profound humility; the ingenuous manner in which he acknowledged and repaired his errors; his detestation of party spirit and divisions; his rejection of praise; his universal love; his particular love to the faithful; his love to those whose faith was wavering; his love to his countrymen and his enemies; his love to those whom he knew only by report; his charity towards the poor; his charity towards sinners; the condescension of his humble charity; his courage in defence of truth; his prudence in frustrating the designs of his enemies; his tenderness toward others, and his severity toward himself; his love never degenerated into cowardice; his perfect disinterestedness; his condescension in labouring with his own hands; his respect for the holy estate of matrimony; the ardour of his love; his generous fears and succeeding consolation; the grand subject of his glorying; his patience and fortitude; his firmness before magistrates; his courage in consoling his persecuted brethren; his humble confidence in producing the seals of his ministry; his readiness to seal with his blood the truths of the Gospel; the sweet suspense of his choice between life and death; the constancy of his zeal and diligence to the end of his course; his triumphs over the evils of life and the terrors of death.
After this follows “The Portrait of Lukewarm Ministers and False Apostles;” then Fletcher answers “Objections” to the “Portrait of St. Paul;” and next, with consummate ability, states “The Doctrines of an Evangelical Pastor;” and concludes with “An Essay on the Connexion of Doctrines with Morality,” in answer to the infidel philosophy of Voltaire and Rosseau, recently deceased. The last two sections are invaluable, and exhibit Fletcher in all the strength of his sanctified genius.
To make selections from so comprehensive a work as this is difficult, but the following specimens may be acceptable and useful:—
The faithful pastor.—“The disposition of a faithful pastor is, in every respect, diametrically opposed to that of a worldly minister. If you observe the conversation of an ecclesiastic who is influenced by the spirit of the world, you will hear him intimating either that he has, or that he would not be sorry to have, the precedency among his brethren; to live in a state of affluence and splendour, and to secure to himself such distinguished appointments as would increase both his dignity and his income, without making any extraordinary addition to his pastoral labours. You will find him anxious to be admitted into the best companies, and occasionally forming parties for the chase, or some other vain amusement. While the true pastor cries out, in the self-renouncing language of the great Apostle, ‘God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.’ Oh! ye, who preside over the household of God, learn of the Apostle Paul to manifest your real superiority. Surpass your inferiors in humility, in charity, in zeal, in your painful labours for the salvation of sinners, in your invincible courage to encounter those dangers which threaten your brethren, and by your unwearied patience in bearing those persecutions which the faithful disciples of Christ are perpetually called to endure from a corrupt world. Thus shall you honourably replace the first Christian prelates, and happily restore the Church to its primitive dignity.”
Writing sermons, and reading or delivering them.—“He, who spake as never man spake, rejected the arts of our modern orators, delivering His discourses in a style of easy simplicity, and unaffected zeal. We do not find that St. Paul and the other Apostles imposed upon themselves the troublesome servitude of penning down their discourses. And we are well assured that, when the Seventy and the Twelve were commissioned to publish the Gospel, no directions of this nature were given in either case.”
“What advantage has accrued to the Church, by renouncing the apostolic method of publishing the Gospel? We have indolence and artifice, in the place of sincerity and vigilance. Those public discourses, which were anciently the effects of conviction and zeal, are now become the weakly exercises of learning and art. ‘We believe, and therefore speak,’ is an expression, that has grown entirely obsolete among modern pastors. Nothing is more common among us than to say, ‘As we have sermons prepared upon a variety of subjects, we are ready to deliver them, as opportunity offers.’
“Many inconveniences arise from this method of preaching. While the physician of souls is labouring to compose a learned dissertation upon some plain passage of Scripture, he has but little leisure to visit those languishing patients, who need his immediate assistance. He thinks it sufficient to attend upon them every Sabbath-day, in the place appointed for public duty: but he recollects not, that those, to whom his counsel is peculiarly necessary, are the very persons who refuse to meet him there. His unprofitable employments at home leave him no opportunity to go in pursuit of his wandering sheep. He meets them, it is true, at stated periods, in the common fold; but it is equally true that, during every successive interval, he discovers the coldest indifference with respect to their spiritual welfare. From this unbecoming conduct of many a minister, one would naturally imagine, that the flock were rather called to seek out their indolent pastor, than that he was purposely hired to pursue every straying sheep.
“Since the orator’s art has taken the place of the energy of faith, what happy effects has it produced upon the minds of men? Have we discovered more frequent conversions among us? Are formal professors more generally seized with a religious fear? Do the wicked depart from the Church, to bewail their transgressions in private; and believers to visit the mourners in their affliction? Is it not rather to be lamented that we are, at this day, equally distant from Christian charity, and primitive simplicity?