These testimonies may be closed, though they are not exhausted, by a passage 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 God 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 passibus æquis." 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 circumstances 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.)