Another was Mary Barnard, who lived to the age of ninety, was very lame, but always crawled to Madeley church when the weather would permit. Totally without education herself, she had a son who became a Methodist local preacher. Her death occurred in 1797, and her last message to Fletcher’s widow was,—“The covenant is signed and sealed between my Lord and me. I am His by a marriage bond; and He is mine. And now I set to my seal, that the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin.”[[82]]
Such conversions were among Fletcher’s encouragements; and he greatly needed them. His preaching saved some, but offended others. In one of his unpublished manuscripts, dated “Madeley, February 28, 1762,” he notes a somewhat remarkable occurrence:—
“Last Sunday, only one objection was made against the doctrine I preached in this church, and that, I think, was a poor one, as it was supported by no argument and no Scripture. The sum of it was this, ‘It is hard to say that one breach of the law brings a man under the curse, and exposes one out of Christ to the damnation of hell.’ To this I answer by four arguments.
“The first is taken from matters of fact in the Word of God. By one sin, and by the offence of one, condemnation came upon all men, namely by the one sin of Adam’s eating the forbidden fruit. And a more awful example you have in the sudden destruction of Ananias and Sapphira his wife for having told one single lie.
“The second argument is taken from common sense, which tells us that one leak in a ship unstopped will sink it in time, as certainly as a hundred; one piece broken out of a glass makes it a useless glass, as much as if it was dashed into twenty pieces; one stab of a dagger through the heart kills a man as much as a hundred would. And so one sin uncancelled by Christ’s blood will as surely destroy an unconverted man as a hundred, though his destruction will not be so terrible as that of him who has committed a hundred.
“The third argument is taken from the exactness of human laws and the practice of earthly judges. They all condemn a man for one single offence. If one can be proved it is enough. Let a murderer kill one man, he is to be hanged as well as if he had killed a hundred. Let a highwayman take one pound from one single person, the law condemns him for a felon, and sends him to the gallows, as well as if he had taken a thousand pounds from a thousand different travellers. The law of the land, to the breach of which the penalty is annexed, is as effectually broken by one act of felony as by a hundred; and the law of God is as much, though not so heinously, broken, by one sin as by a hundred: consequently the law of God curses and damns for one sin as well as for a hundred.
“The fourth argument is taken from Deuteronomy xxvii. 26, ‘Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them.’ Also, Galatians iii. 10, ‘Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them.’ And James ii. 10, ‘Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.’ He violates the law, despises the law, incurs the punishment threatened.”
Passing by Fletcher’s arguments and logic, this fugitive manuscript is of some importance, as intimating not only that objections were made to Fletcher’s doctrines, but also that he was accustomed publicly to notice and answer them in his parish church.
Fletcher had other troubles besides those arising from objections to his teaching. In his Fast-day sermon, preached on March 12, 1762, he had cried:—
“‘Because of swearing the land mourneth.’ If the prophet of old had lived in our degenerate days, he would have added, ‘Because of perjury the land groaneth.’ To go no farther than the place we inhabit, how many of us, who have been entrusted with public offices, have wilfully broken the oaths administered unto us? How many open and notorious drunkards, fighters, sabbath-breakers, blasphemers of God’s Word, and cursers of men, have escaped deserved censure, I shall not say by the accidental neglect, but by the downright perjury of officers?”