It was at this time that Fletcher’s health showed grievous signs of failure His arduous toil, long journeys, close writing, and insufficient food, had told all too surely upon a delicately-organised frame A violent cough beset him, with slight but frequent hæmorrhage.
John Wesley advised an open-air cure, pressing him to spend some months on horse-back, touring with him through parts of England and Scotland. They set out together in the early spring, and travelled 1,100 or 1,200 miles in this way (not, however, into Scotland), taking such journeys as were suited to the invalid’s strength So greatly did he profit by some weeks in the saddle that Wesley declared if he would only have continued it for a few months longer he would have become a strong man once more.
In May, 1776, however, we find him at Bristol Hot Wells, debarred from his parochial work Wesley suggested more saddle-cure, proposing a five-hundred mile tour to Cornwall, but Fletcher had by that time resigned himself to the hands of a physician who forbade the exertion, being out of sympathy with a remedy so far in advance of the times.
This medical adviser, however, mistook his case, reducing him to great weakness A specialist who then undertook him restored his strength somewhat by more generous diet, although the relapse which followed was so serious that his friends thought him to be dying, and his congregation sang an intercessory hymn composed for the occasion.
From his multiplicity of remedies and advisers, however, Wesley rescued him once more, put him in the saddle, and led him through Oxfordshire, Northampton, and Norfolk, bringing him home greatly benefited for the open air.
Fresh-air treatment, however, needs wisely conducting in the untoward climate of England, and a self-prescribed ride upon a winter’s day of bitter frost threw Fletcher again into suffering and danger Friends nursed him in London, and a noted specialist was brought to him by Mr. Ireland, whose kindness was ever unfailing; while two or three physicians regularly attended and gave their best advice. Rest, silence, and a diet of the richest milk seemed most to help him, but it was a real sacrifice for him to hold his peace concerning the intense love of Jesus which filled his soul Often by signs he would “stir up those about him to pray and praise.”
“When he was able to converse, his favourite subject was the promise of the Father, the gift of the Holy Ghost, including the rich, peculiar blessing of union with the Father and the Son mentioned in the prayer of our Lord, recorded in John xvii ’We must not be content,’ said he, ’to be only cleansed from sin; we must be filled with the Spirit.’ One asking him, What was to be experienced in the full accomplishment of the promise of the Father? ‘Oh,’ said he, ’what shall I say? All the sweetness of the drawings of the Father, all the love of the Son, all the rich effusions of peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, more than ever can be expressed are comprehended here! To attain it, the Spirit maketh intercession in the soul, like a God wrestling with a God.’”
Fletcher’s conversation had a savour all its own He heard and saw nothing which did not in some way suggest to him the ways and love of God He was much in the habit of spiritualising all allusions of an earthly nature, and what in some men would have sounded like cant was refined by his inner spirituality to sanctified quaintness. For instance, Mr. Ireland with great difficulty persuaded Fletcher to sit for his portrait While the artist was busy, his subject used the time in exhorting all in the room to spare no pains to get the outlines and colourings of the image of Jesus impressed upon their hearts During the barbarous blood-letting to which his physicians subjected him, he would talk very tenderly of “the precious blood-shedding of the Lamb of God.” On being entertained in the house of a friend he besought the cook to “stir up the Divine fire of love within his heart, that it might burn up all the rubbish therein, and raise a flame of holy affection”; while he addressed the housemaid as follows: “I entreat you to sweep every corner of your heart, that it may be fit to receive your Heavenly Guest!”
The Rev Henry Venn met Fletcher at the house of Mr. Ireland, where they stayed together for six weeks Referring to this visit some years later, Mr. Venn remarked to another clergyman:—
“Sir, Mr. Fletcher was a luminary—a luminary, did I say? He was a sun! I have known all the great men for these fifty years, but I have known none like him I was intimately acquainted with him... I never heard him say a single word which was not proper to be spoken, and which had not a tendency to minister grace to the hearers... Never did I hear Mr. Fletcher speak ill of anyone He would pray for those who walked disorderly, but he would not publish their faults.”