Fletcher of Madeley

Fletcher of Madeley.

by Frederic W. Macdonald.

PREFACE.

I have to express my obligations to the Rev. L. Tyerman for the help I have received in writing this little book from his life of Fletcher, published two years ago under the t.i.tle of "Wesley"s Designated Successor." Mr. Tyerman"s labours in the sphere of Methodist history and biography are too well known to require any word of commendation from me. It may be enough to say that he has made it impossible for any one to study the history of the great movement with which the names of Wesley, Whitefield, and Fletcher are a.s.sociated, without having recourse to his volumes. There may be differences of opinion respecting Mr. Tyerman"s judgments upon men and things; there can be none whatever as to his patient, laborious research, and perfect honesty in the use of his ample materials.

I am also much indebted to my friends the Rev. George Mather, now of Falmouth, and Mr. George Stampe, of Great Grimsby, for the opportunity of examining a considerable number of Fletcher"s ma.n.u.scripts, hitherto unpublished. It was not to be expected that fresh light could be thrown on Fletcher"s character, but these papers have enabled me to supply some links, and add a few details to the story of his life.

CHAPTER I.

_INTRODUCTORY._

There is reason to think that the interest felt in the Evangelical Revival of the last century, after declining for awhile, is again steadily increasing. It may be said that this quickened interest is but part of a larger intellectual movement, of a reaction, in which we have pa.s.sed from undue disparagement of the eighteenth century to an exaggerated estimate of its importance and value. Nor is it likely, when eighteenth century forms of literature, philosophy, and social life are being studied with so much sympathy, that the most prominent event in its religious history would escape attention.

There is some truth in this, but it is not the whole account of the matter. The fact is, and we are continually being reminded of it, the consequences of the Revival are by no means exhausted. We are not yet at the end of its manifestations; and though some of its later forms have new and striking features of their own, their relation to the original movement is attested both by historic descent and by inward resemblances and affinities. So long as this is the case, and the Revival, or Reformation, of a century and a half ago is still amongst the living forces that influence society, the interest with which its rise and progress are regarded will continue. Active Christian spirits will seek to understand and respond to its newer developments; and others, whether in sympathy with those developments or not, will be obliged to take account of them, and a.s.sign them, as far as possible, to their true succession and order.

In addition to its direct, historical consequences, moreover, time is continually discovering or suggesting remoter and more complicated results of the Evangelical Revival, thus rendering the study of the whole question at once more difficult and more attractive. What were its real relations, if any, to the teaching of Coleridge, the points of agreement and divergence, of attraction and repulsion between it and that original and influential mind, to which so many, who in their turn have influenced the course of religious thought in England, have confessed themselves supremely indebted? What is the connexion, revealed both by resemblances and by contrasts, between the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century and the Tractarian or Anglo-Catholic movement of the nineteenth, between the Oxford of John and Charles Wesley and the Oxford of Keble and Pusey and Newman? What has the Revival contributed to the gradual but unmistakable change that has come over the theology of the Calvinistic Churches; and, again, to the progress of democracy in Church and State? As regards some at least of these questions, it is too soon to look for precise and final answers; but their relevance will be admitted, and the evidence by which they must be determined acc.u.mulates from year to year.

While the interest in the Evangelical movement is thus reinforced from various quarters, time, in the exercise of its kindliest office, has removed a princ.i.p.al hindrance to a fair appreciation of it. Justice is now generally done to the character of its leaders, and the existing differences of opinion as to the value of their work are, for the most part, differences of which there is no need to be ashamed. It is no longer necessary to vindicate their memory from ign.o.ble charges of fanaticism, hypocrisy, or ambition. To slander Wesley, or to ridicule Whitefield, has ceased to bring profit or to give pleasure to any one.

Hardly a month pa.s.ses but a monument is erected, a eulogy p.r.o.nounced, a tribute paid to one or other of the men who, a hundred and fifty years ago, brought new life to the English Church and nation. Their reputation is not now a charge upon the loyalty of particular bodies of Christians, at once doing battle for themselves and for the character of their fathers and founders; they belong to the Churches, which are many, to the Church, which is One, and their names are in the keeping of the general company of Christians far and near.

And this change from the strife and bitterness of former days has come about, as such changes are wont to come, not so much by valiant advocacy or successful disputation, as by the sure working of G.o.d upon the hearts of men, enabling them to "discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth G.o.d and him that serveth Him not." Sooner or later this discernment comes, stealing through a thousand channels of conviction into the heart and conscience of a people, no one knows precisely when or how; and far more weighty than any formal acts of canonization are the verdicts by which the conscience of after ages names its benefactors and heroes, often to the reversal of the pa.s.sionate judgments of earlier times. The monument of the Wesleys is in Westminster Abbey; Whitefield"s grave is in America; Fletcher"s ashes lie in Madeley churchyard. Each has his record in a fitting inscription; but their common epitaph, as men once persecuted for righteousness" sake, but now to be had in everlasting remembrance, was written long before: "This was he whom we had sometimes in derision, and a proverb of reproach; we fools accounted his life madness, and his end to be without honour: how is he to be numbered among the children of G.o.d, and his lot is among the saints!... The righteous live for evermore; their reward also is with the Lord, and the care of them is with the Most High."

In the minutes of the Methodist Conference which met at Bristol, in July, 1786, the following entry occurs:

"_Q._ Who has died this year?

"_A._ John Fletcher, a pattern of all holiness, scarce to be paralleled in a century."

Such is the brief record that marks the pa.s.sing away of a man whose place in the love and veneration of Wesley and of the Methodists was unique. Second only to the great leader himself in his influence, and in the special character of that influence leaving even Wesley behind, Fletcher"s loss was the greatest sustained by the Revival from the death of Whitefield, in 1770, to that of Wesley, in 1791. One word in the short obituary notice reveals the secret of his power; it was _holiness_.

The term saint, in the New Testament extended to all the members of Christ, is often used colloquially to describe any one who, in comparison with worldly men or mere formal Christians, is conspicuous for reality and earnestness of spiritual life; but it may be applied to Fletcher in that last and highest sense, which makes it so rare a designation even of the best men. He possessed in an exceptional degree the qualities that const.i.tute saintliness: deep humility and transparent purity, absolute unworldliness, with love unfailing, and patience that had its perfect work. The impression that he made upon those with whom he came in contact has been renewed upon biographers and historians.

"Fletcher was a saint," is the testimony of earlier and later witnesses. To none of his a.s.sociates in the great Revival, the goodliest company of Christian men the age possessed, is this testimony borne in the same sense and with the same entire agreement. He was excelled by them in one respect and another; he could not, for example, sustain comparison for a moment with Wesley in the commanding powers, intellectual and moral, that have placed him among the greatest leaders of the Church Catholic; but for seraphic piety, for sanct.i.ty that had no perceptible spot or flaw, Fletcher of Madeley stood alone.

This is the deliberate judgment of those who knew him best. Of these Wesley was the chief. In the funeral sermon which he preached soon after Fletcher"s death he said: "I was intimately acquainted with him for above thirty years. I conversed with him morning, noon, and night, without the least reserve, during a journey of many hundred miles. And in all that time I never heard him speak an improper word, or saw him do an improper action. To conclude: Many exemplary men have I known, holy in heart and life, within fourscore years; but one equal to him I have not known, one so inwardly and outwardly devoted to G.o.d. So unblamable a character in every respect I have not found either in Europe or America, and I scarce expect to find another such on this side eternity."

Benson, for many years the intimate friend of Fletcher, wrote to Wesley as follows: "I have often thought the testimony that Bishop Burnet bears of Archbishop Leighton might be borne of him with equal propriety: "After an intimate acquaintance of many years, and after being with him by night and by day, at home and abroad, in public and in private, ... I must say, I never heard an idle word drop from his lips, or any conversation which was not to the use of edifying. I never saw him in any temper in which I myself would not have wished to be found at death." Any one who has been intimately acquainted with Mr.

Fletcher will say the same of him, and they who knew him best will say it with the most a.s.surance."

All other contemporary notices of Fletcher are in the same strain. So with the historians and biographers of subsequent times. "Fletcher in any communion would have been a saint," says Southey. "He was a saint,"

wrote Isaac Taylor, "as unearthly a being as could tread the earth at all." "Fletcher," says Robert Hall, "is a seraph who burns with the ardour of Divine love. Spurning the fetters of mortality, he almost habitually seems to have antic.i.p.ated the rapture of the beatific vision."

These testimonies may be closed, though they are not exhausted, by a pa.s.sage from one of the most recent and valuable works on the religious life of the last century:[1] "If John Wesley was the great leader and organiser, Charles Wesley the great poet, and George Whitefield the great preacher of Methodism, the highest type of saintliness which it produced was unquestionably John Fletcher. Never perhaps since the rise of Christianity has the mind which was in Christ Jesus been more faithfully copied than it was in the Vicar of Madeley. To say that he was a good Christian is saying too little. He was more than Christian, he was Christlike."

Fletcher"s first biographer was John Wesley. In the preface to the funeral sermon preached in London on November 6th, 1785, he says: "I hastily put together some memorials of this great man, intending, if G.o.d permit, when I have more leisure and more materials, to write a fuller account of his life." Twelve months later, being then in the eighty-fourth year of his age, the following entry appears in his "Journal": "_Oct. 25th_, 1786. I now applied myself in earnest to the writing of Mr. Fletcher"s life, having procured the best materials I could. To this I dedicated all the time I could spare till November, from five in the morning till eight at night. These are my studying hours; I cannot write longer in a day without hurting my eyes." The labour of love was soon completed, and Wesley published "A Short Account of the Life and Death of the Rev. John Fletcher," with the motto, "Sequor, non pa.s.sibus aequis." That was no conventional eulogy--Wesley did not deal in them,--but, as we have seen, his heart"s tribute to the holiest man he had ever known. And if the venerable Wesley counted himself but as one who followed, and that at a distance, the saintly Vicar of Madeley, he would be a hardy writer who could set himself to portray such a life and character unvisited by misgivings and unchastened by the responsibility that comes from the study of high examples of Christian holiness. But for the reader also, if his heart is as the writer"s, there will be a share alike in the humiliation and in the hopes which the study of a holy life may well afford. This brief memoir of Fletcher of Madeley is attempted because no lapse of time or change of circ.u.mstances can make it unseasonable to contemplate a character like his. Such men do not die:

"----a sweet and virtuous soul, Like seasoned timber, never gives; But though the whole world turn to coal, Then chiefly lives."

CHAPTER II.

_EARLY LIFE._

(1729-1750.)

John Fletcher was a Swiss by birth and education. His name was properly Jean Guillaume de la Flechere. The origin of the anglicized form that he afterwards adopted is thus explained by himself: "Soon after I came to England my English friends, complaining of the length of my Swiss name, began to contract it by dropping the French syllables of it. So they called me Fletcher, and by that name I have been known among the English ever since." He came of an old and respectable family, not without distinguished connexions. His father had, in early life, held a commission in the French army, but, retiring from the service in order to marry, had returned to his native country, where he became a colonel in the militia, and _a.s.sesseur Baillival_, or a.s.sistant judge, of Nyon.

Here he resided in a fine old house in the outskirts of the town, not rich, but possessing a modest fortune and considerable local influence; and here John Fletcher, the youngest of eight children, was born on September 12th, 1729.

Nyon is an old town dating from Roman times. It is about fifteen miles from Geneva, on the northern sh.o.r.e of the lake, picturesquely placed at the water"s edge, with the Jura Mountains rising in the distance behind, and the mountains of Savoy magnificently visible across the lake in front. The pa.s.sion for Swiss scenery had not then become common and conventional. Some fifty years later Gibbon mentions it as of recent origin, counting it "a misfortune rather than a merit that the situation and beauty of the Pays de Vaud ... and the fashion of viewing the mountains and glaciers have opened us on all sides to the incursions of foreigners." Fletcher was not before his time with regard to this most modern of sentiments or susceptibilities. There is little trace of impressions made on him either by the grandeur or the loveliness of his native scenery. In a letter written when, at fifty years of age, he was revisiting Nyon, he invites a friend to come to "this delightful country, and share a pleasant apartment, and one of the finest prospects in the world in the house where I was born.... We have a fine, shady wood near the lake, where I can ride in the cool all the day, and enjoy the singing of a mult.i.tude of birds." And then he adds, "But this, though sweet, does not come up to the singing of my dear friends in England."

Fletcher received his early education at a school in Nyon, and was then sent, with his two brothers, to the Academy, now the University, of Geneva, where he spent seven years in diligent and successful study. On leaving Geneva he spent some time at Lenzburg, chiefly for the sake of learning German. In the scanty records of his youth there is a remarkable succession of perils and hairbreadth escapes. Fletcher was a bold and skilful swimmer, and on at least two occasions his adventurousness nearly cost him his life. Once he swam with a companion to a small, rocky island, about five miles from the sh.o.r.e of the lake.

They found it so steep and smooth that they could not land, and it was not until they were completely exhausted by swimming round it that they came upon a place where they could crawl ash.o.r.e, and whence they were rescued by a pa.s.sing boat. The other adventure was still more perilous.

He was swimming in the Rhine, and was drawn unawares into the mid-stream, where, he says, "the water was extremely rough, and poured along like a galloping horse." After a long and desperate struggle with the current, he was carried into a mill-race, and hurled among the piles on which the mill stood. A blow on the breast made him senseless, and he knew nothing more till he rose on the other side of the mill, after being among the piles for twenty minutes, to find himself five miles from the place where he had started. Another time, when he and his brother were fencing with swords blunted with a kind of b.u.t.ton fixed upon the point, the b.u.t.ton on his brother"s weapon broke, and Fletcher received a desperate thrust in the side that had well-nigh killed him. These incidents have often been referred to as ill.u.s.trations of the Providence that directed his life; but they reveal in addition elements of character that should not be overlooked. There was nothing effeminate in him. On this point a mistake may be made. It is possible to misinterpret the delicate features, with their rapt expression, the almost excessive modesty, the language fuller charged with emotion than is quite our English wont. But there was strength, not weakness, beneath these often misread indications of character. The natural man in John Fletcher was a soldier and an athlete, and these qualities of manhood remained with him to the end, though turned to higher issues and manifest in other forms than in these early years.

From childhood Fletcher had a tender conscience and a devout spirit, and was exceptionally free from fault. He says, "I think it was when I was seven years of age that I first began to feel the love of G.o.d shed abroad in my heart, and that I resolved to give myself up to Him, and to the service of His Church, if ever I should be fit for it." Years afterwards there came for him a time of spiritual conflict, of heart-searching, and deep repentance, from which he pa.s.sed into the clear light of reconciliation with G.o.d through faith in Christ; but his conversion had this in common with Wesley"s, that it crowned and completed the piety of his youth. In both cases conversion was a momentous, unmistakable epoch; but not by reason of any change from reckless and unG.o.dly living. It was one of those supreme events in the history of the soul that has its foundations and beginnings long before. Its relation to the past is not, outwardly at least, one of contrast, and inwardly it is not wholly so. The continuity of the spiritual life is not broken, but rather a stage is reached where the discipline and endeavours of previous years, having served their end, pa.s.s into a larger liberty and a more abundant life. "It pleased G.o.d to reveal His Son in me," is the true account, not only of sudden conversions, properly so called, but of that last act of grace which brings devout and serious youth to the full knowledge of Him whom they have long sought, and served while yet seeking.

Fletcher"s student life seems to have been wholly free from the vices which, both then and now, are too generally counted venial, or even natural and reasonable, in youth. His subsequent self-upbraidings were deep enough, but they must not be misunderstood. When he says, in a letter written to his brother in his 26th year, "My infancy was vicious, and my youth still more so," the reference is not to open, actual sins, but to that ignorance of the true Christian life which, apprehended in its full significance, appears to the regenerate conscience as the one root-evil. His confessions have little in common with those of Augustine, or Bunyan, or John Newton. The most particular allusion they contain is the following: "I formed an acquaintance with some deists, at first with the design of converting them, and afterwards with the pretence of thoroughly examining their sentiments.

But my heart, like that of Balaam, was not right with G.o.d. He abandoned me, and I enrolled myself in their party. A considerable change took place in my deportment. Before, I had a form of religion, and now I lost it; but as to the state of my heart, it was precisely the same. I did not remain many weeks in this state; the Good Shepherd sought after me, a wandering sheep. Again I became professedly a Christian; that is, I resumed a regular attendance at church and the communion, and offered up frequent prayers in the name of Jesus Christ. There were also in my heart some sparks of true love to G.o.d, and some germs of genuine faith; but a connexion with worldly characters, and an undue anxiety to promote my secular interests, prevented the growth of these Christian graces."

It had been Fletcher"s desire as a child to become a Christian minister. This object was still kept in view during his studies at Geneva, and appears to have been approved by his family; but as he entered his twentieth year his views underwent a considerable change, the notion of entering the ministry was abandoned, and he sought a military career instead. One or two reasons may be a.s.signed for this change. He feared he was unfit for the ministry. Though outwardly of blameless life, he felt, as the time for ordination drew near, his need of true faith in Christ and love to G.o.d, and shrank from an office for which these were the first requisites. Further, a doctrinal difficulty disclosed itself. "I was disgusted by the necessity I should be under to subscribe the doctrine of predestination"; and while thus religiously and doctrinally disturbed, the influence of certain friends combined with his own inclination to suggest that frequent resource of the more adventurous youth of Switzerland, military service in some foreign army. Fletcher"s father had served the king of France, why should not he take service under the king of Portugal, who was about to send troops to Brazil? Accordingly, disregarding his father"s remonstrances, but following his example, he made his way to Lisbon, raised a company of his countrymen, doubtless by the method embodied in the proverb, "Pas d"argent, pas de Suisse," and received a captain"s commission in the Portuguese service. This kind of professional soldiership, for which no patriotism or devotion to a n.o.ble cause could be pleaded, did not shock the general conscience in Fletcher"s day. It presented no difficulty to his own. That such a vocation is in our own day generally condemned, being barely tolerated under the most extenuating circ.u.mstances, is an ill.u.s.tration of progress in morals and religion,--one of many that may be set over against some discouraging aspects of the times.

Meanwhile Fletcher is waiting in Lisbon for a remittance from home which does not arrive. His parents disapprove of this Portuguese-Brazilian venture, and refuse to send him money. But his mind is made up, and with or without money he will go. An unlooked for hindrance, however, prevents. A servant waiting upon him at breakfast let fall a kettle of hot water, and so scalded his leg as to lay him helpless in bed. In the meantime the ship sailed for Brazil without him, and was never heard of again.

On his recovery he returned to Switzerland, there being no further prospect of employment in the Portuguese service. But his desire for military life was unabated. His uncle and eldest brother were in the Dutch service, and in a little while he received word that his uncle had procured a commission for him. He at once set out for Flanders, but before he could join the army the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in October, 1748, entirely altered the situation. Troops were disbanded or sent home, and the uncle on whom his hopes depended left the service, and died soon afterwards. With his death Fletcher"s hopes were entirely destroyed, and he abandoned all thoughts of becoming a soldier.

The first well-marked stage of his history was now completed. He had reached manhood. He had received the best education that his age and his country afforded. In temperament he was active and ardent, in spirit serious and devout; and though he had declined from his early piety, he was entirely free from the follies and vices so easily learnt, and so readily condoned, at college and in camp. It was impossible to say how a life with such preparations would open out.

That its promise was fair, and even n.o.ble, might well be judged; but that it should find at once the supply of its own deepest want, and the sphere for the employment of its powers, in a foreign country, and in connexion with a religious movement wholly unknown in Switzerland, and unsanctioned either by Church or society in England, was among the things that could not possibly be foreseen. Lives like Fletcher"s, when they lie complete before us, are luminous in the linked succession of divinely directed steps; the overruling Providence is so manifest that nothing which takes place surprises us; but, followed in their natural order, the determining events are unforeseen, they come in unlikely forms and from quarters whence they could not be expected. From Swiss Moderatism Fletcher was to pa.s.s into the bosom of English Methodism.

The student reared in the school of Calvin and Beza was to be the apologist of Evangelical Arminianism. He was to become, not

"Captain, or colonel, or knight-in-arms"

in Portugal, Brazil, or Flanders, but "Vicar of Madeley." But of all this he knew nothing;--how could he?