One of the Greenwood family, with whom Fletcher frequently stayed, made a reference to this production of his thought, which it were well to remember: “Whoever has had the privilege of observing Mr. Fletcher’s conduct will not scruple to say that he was a living comment on his own account of Christian perfection.... As far as man is able to judge, he did possess perfect humility, perfect resignation, and perfect love.”
CHAPTER XIX.
Failing Health
Unwilling as he might be for further controversy, Fletcher quickly discovered that he had not yet done with it Toplady, Vicar of a Devon village, and so-called author of “Rock of Ages,” bitterly attacked a tract of Mr. Wesley’s on Predestination, referring to some of his own Calvinian heresies Wesley had neither time nor inclination to wage a paper war with an angry man The work was undertaken by Fletcher, who found himself plunged afresh into the troubled waters of religious controversy. In his very Introduction Fletcher refuses to have anything to say to the personal charges vindictively hurled by his opponent:—
“These charges,” he writes, “being chiefly founded upon Mr. Toplady’s logical mistakes, they will, of their own accord, fall to the ground as soon as the mistakes on which they rest shall be exposed May the God of truth and love grant that if Mr. Toplady has the honour of producing the best arguments, I, for one, may have the advantage of yielding to them! To be conquered by truth and love is to prove conqueror over our two greatest enemies—error and sin.”
He then proceeds to deal with each of Toplady’s seventy-three arguments in favour of Predestination, abolishing them one by one, but in a cool, calm, reasonable way which contrasts nobly and sweetly with the angry prejudice of the other.
His preaching tours were interfered with by this work, but he deemed himself to be doing as much, if not more, for God by pouring the daylight of heavenly reason upon the errors which darkened the minds, narrowed the perspective, and burdened the hearts of so many in that day of Calvinian controversy.
Strangely enough, Fletcher’s next essay was into the arena of political strife—or, as he terms it, “Christian politics"— being led thereto by a pamphlet of Wesley’s upon the American War of Independence then raging He thoroughly prepared himself, not unnecessarily, for the storm which was to follow; for the minds of men were divided, and political speech has ever tended to undue licence and heat.
The Government of George iii., however, considered that Fletcher had uttered words as valuable as they were timely The Secretary of State for the Colonies introduced the tract to the Lord Chancellor, and he to the King It was not long before Fletcher was asked if he would entertain the idea of any preferment in the Church; was there aught which the Lord Chancellor might do for him in this way? His reply chimed with every act of his life “I want nothing,” answered the saintly man; “nothing but more grace.”