“I am quite of your opinion about the mischief that some professors do in the Church of Christ under the mask of sanctity; but my Master bids me bear with the tares until the harvest, lest, in rooting them up, I should promiscuously pull up the wheat also. As to Mr. Wesley’s system of perfection, it tends rather to promote humility than pride, if I may credit his description of it in the lines following:—
“‘Now let me gain perfection’s height,
Now let me into nothing fall,
Be less than nothing in Thy sight,
And feel that Christ is all in all!’
“More than this I do not desire, and I hope that, short of this, nothing will satisfy either my dear friend or me.”[[104]]
The following letter, to Charles Wesley, refers to the same disturbance; but it also mentions another matter of great interest. Six years ago, Fletcher had become acquainted with Miss Bosanquet. During the present year, he had commenced a correspondence, in the highest degree religious, with Miss Hatton. He was a lone man, living among colliers. He had lately been with Charles Wesley. Charles was an eminently social man, and had suggested to Fletcher that he would do well to marry. Fletcher replied as follows:—
“Madeley, September 9, 1763.
“My Dear Sir,—I see that we ought to learn continually to cast our burdens upon the Lord, who alone can bear them without fatigue and pain. If Maxfield returns, the Lord may correct his errors, and give him so to insist on the fruits of faith as to prevent antinomianism. I believe him sincere; and, though obstinate and suspicious, I am persuaded he has a true desire to know the will and live the life of God. I reply in the same words you quoted to me in one of your letters,—‘Don’t be afraid of a wreck, for Jesus is in the ship.’ After the most violent storm, the Lord will, perhaps, all at once, bring our ship into the desired haven.
“You ask me a very singular question with respect to women; I shall, however, answer it with a smile, as I suppose you asked it. You might have remarked that, for some days before I set off for Madeley, I considered matrimony with a different eye to what I had done; and the person who then presented herself to my imagination was Miss Bosanquet. Her image pursued me for some hours the last day, and that so warmly, that I should, perhaps, have lost my peace if a suspicion of the truth of Juvenal’s proverb, ‘Veniunt a dote sagittae,’ had not made me blush, fight, and fly to Jesus, who delivered me at the same moment from her image and the idea of marriage. Since that time, I have been more than ever on my guard against admitting the idea of matrimony, sometimes by the consideration of the love of Jesus, which ought to be my whole felicity; and, at others, by the following reflections.