A Letter to the Loving and Beloved People of the Parish of Madeley, and Its Vicinity, Who Have Lost a Friend to Piety in the Death of Mrs. Fletcher, Widow of the Rev. J. W. Fletcher, (or de la Flechere,) Late Vicar of Madeley, Shropshire.Tooth, Mary
Religion
A Letter to the Loving and Beloved People of the Parish of Madeley, and Its Vicinity, Who Have Lost a Friend to Piety in the Death of Mrs. Fletcher, Widow of the Rev. J. W. Fletcher, (or de la Flechere,) Late Vicar of Madeley, Shropshire.
Tooth, Mary
Fletcher, Mary, 1739-1815; Methodist women -- Biography
These were the last words her beloved lips uttered; for an hour after
this, about one o’clock in the morning of December 9th, the noise her
breath had so long made, ceased. I thought, is she dropped asleep? it
immediately came to my mind, “Asleep in Jesus: see a soul escape to
bliss.” I went directly to her bed side, where I found the beloved body
without the immortal spirit, which had entered the realms of endless day.
My feelings are not to be described; I clung to the casket of the saint,
I knelt down by the side of it, and cried to him who had just now called
home the spirit of my friend, that the mantle might rest on me. At
length I thought I should injure her dear remains, if I did not call the
family up; I therefore went and called my sister and the servant, at half
past one; after which I sent for Mrs. Perks, who kindly came over
immediately. I never left the chamber, while any thing could be done for
her: I had promised to be with her to the last, and the Lord enabled me
so to do.
Her countenance was as sweet a one as was ever seen in death. There was
at last neither sigh, groan, or struggle, but all the appearance of a
person in the most composed slumber. When I first undrew the curtain,
and saw her dear head dropped off the pillow, and looking so sweetly
composed, I could not persuade myself the spirit was fled, till I took
her in my arms, and found no motion left. I then perceived, the moment
she had so much longed for, had arrived; for I think I have heard her
some hundreds of times exclaim, with the most vehement desire, “O, my
Jesus, when shall I fly to thy arms!” She was always looking and waiting
for the happy moment when she should gain the blissful shore, and
“See the Lamb in glory stand,
Encircled with his radiant band,
And join the angelic pow’rs.”
Well,
“All that height of glorious bliss
Her everlasting portion is,
And all that heaven is her’s.”
For the last two years of her life she was remarkably partial to the two
following hymns of Mr. Wesley’s; but as the print of the book they were
in was small and pale, I wrote them out upon a sheet of paper, which lay
in a desk by her side, to the last. These she greatly delighted in,
calling them, her sweet hymns. As they are not in our common hymn books,
I here insert them.
FIRST HYMN.
AND shall I, Lord, the cup decline,
So wisely mixt by Love divine,
And tasted first by thee
The bitter draught thou drankest up,
And but this single, sacred drop,
Hast thou reserved for me.
Lord, I receive it at thy hand,
And bear, by thy benign command,
The salutary pain:
With thee to live, I gladly die
And suffer here, above the sky
With my dear Lord to reign.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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