“REV. AND DEAR SIR,—I am confounded when I receive a letter from you. Present and eternal contempt from Christ and all His members is what I deserve. A sentence of death is my due; but, instead of it, I am favoured with lines of love. Your mentioning my poor ministrations among your congregation opens again a wound of shame, that was but half healed. I feel the need of asking God, you, and your hearers to pardon me, for weakening the glorious matter of the Gospel by my wretched broken manner, and for spoiling the heavenly power of it by the uncleanness of my heart and lips. “I should be glad to be your curate some time this year; but I see no opening, nor the least prospect of any. What between the dead and living, a parish ties one down more than a wife. If I could go anywhere this year, it should be to Yorkshire, to accompany Lady Huntingdon, according to a design that I had half formed last year; but I fear I shall be debarred even from this. I set out, God willing, to-morrow morning for Trevecca, to meet her ladyship there, and to show her the way to Madeley, where she proposes to stay three or four days, on her way to Derbyshire. “Last Sunday seven-night, Captain Scott preached to my congregation a sermon, which was more blessed, though preached only upon my horse-block, than a hundred of those I preach in the pulpit. I invited him to come and treat her ladyship next Sunday with another, now the place is consecrated. If you should ever favour Shropshire with your presence, you shall have the captain’s, or the parson’s, pulpit at your option. Many ask me, whether you will not come to have some fruit here also. What must I answer them? I, and many more, complain of a stagnation of the work. What must we do? Everything buds and blossoms about us, yet our winter is not over. “Present my Christian respects to Mrs. Whitefield, Mr. Hardy, Mr. Keen, Mr. Joyce, Mr. Croom, and Mr. Wright. Tell Mr. Keen I am a letter in his debt, and postpone writing it till I have had such a sight of Christ as to breathe His love through every line. “I am, rev. and dear Sir, with sincere affection and respect, your willing, though halting and unworthy servant, “J. FLETCHER.”[136] Footnote 136: _Evangelical Magazine_, 1802, p. 346. Captain Scott, the martial evangelist, mentioned in this letter, was a Shropshire man, and belonged to an ancient and respectable family. He had begun his military life as a cornet, and had been promoted to the rank of captain in the 7th regiment of dragoons. A short time before his first visit to Madeley, Fletcher, in a letter to the Countess of Huntingdon, remarked:—