"Your broadcloth can lap me round two or three times; but the mantle of Divine love, the precious fine robe of Jesus's righteousness, can cover your soul a thousand times. The cloth, fine and good as it is, will not keep out a hard shower; but that garment of salvation will keep out even a shower of brimstone and fire. Your cloth will wear out; but that fine linen, the righteousness of saints, will appear with a finer lustre the more it is worn. The moth may fret your present, or the tailor may spoil it in cutting it, but the present which Jesus has made you is out of reach of the spoiler, and ready for present wear. Let me beseech you, my dear friend, to accept of this heavenly present as I accept of your earthly one. I did not send you one farthing to purchase it; it came unsought, unasked, unexpected, as the seed of the woman came. It came just as I was sending a tailor to buy me cloth for a new coat, and I hope when you next see me it will be in your present; now let Jesus see you in His. Accept it freely. Wear no more the old rusty coat of nature and self-righteousness. Send no more to have it _patched_. Make your boast of an unbought suit, and love to wear the livery of Jesus." John Fletcher's letters all tended to the same point as his sermons--a personal appeal to the soul to whom he addressed himself. To the Rev. Joseph Benson he wrote:-- "The few professors I see in these parts are so far from what I could wish them and myself to be, that I cannot but cry out, 'Lord, how long wilt Thou give Thine heritage to desolation and barrenness? How long shall the heathen say, Where is now their indwelling God?' I hope it is better with you in the north. What are your heart, your pen, your tongue doing? Are they receiving, sealing, spreading the truth everywhere within your sphere? Are you dead to praise or dispraise? Could you quietly pass for a mere fool, and have gross nonsense fathered upon you without any uneasy reflection of self? The Lord bless you! Beware of your grand enemy, earthly wisdom and unbelieving reasonings. You will never overcome but by child-like, loving simplicity." In writing to his schoolmaster at Madeley, the Vicar gives a real home-thrust, yet in so kindly a manner that it could hardly be resented:-- "If I were not a minister I would be a _schoolmaster_, to have the pleasure of bringing up children in the fear of the Lord. That pleasure is yours, relish it, and it will comfort and strengthen you in your work. The joy of the Lord and of charity is our strength. Salute the children from me, and tell them I long to show them the way to happiness and Heaven. Have you mastered the stiffness and shyness of your temper? Charity gives a _meekness, an affability, a child- like simplicity and openness_, which nature has denied you. Let me find you shining by these virtues, and you will revive me much. God bless your labour about the sheep and the lambs!"