“REVEREND AND DEAR SIR,—I have sometimes preached in licensed places, but have never been censured for it. Perhaps it is because my superiors in the Church think me not worth their notice, and despair of shackling me with their unevangelical regularity. If the Bishop were to take me to task about this piece of irregularity, I would observe,— “1. That the canons of men cannot overthrow the canons of God. ‘Preach the word. Be instant in season and out of season.’ ‘The time cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship,’ particularly and exclusively of all other places, neither upon mount Gerizim, nor upon mount Zion; but they shall worship everywhere in spirit and in truth. The contrary canons are Jewish, and subversive of the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free; yea, contrary to the right of Churchmen, which must, at least, include the privilege of dissenters. “2. Before the Bishop shackled me with canons, he charged me to ‘look for Christ’s lost sheep that are dispersed abroad, and for His children who are in the midst of this wicked world;’ and these sheep, etc., I will try to gather whenever I meet them. We have a general canon:—‘While we have time, let us do good to all men, and especially to them who are of the household of faith.’ ‘Go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature’ willing to hear it. “A Justice of the Peace would once prosecute me upon the Conventicle Act; but, when it came to the point, he durst not do it. Some of my parishioners went and complained to the Bishop about my conventicles. I wrote to the Registrar that I hoped his Lordship, who had given me the above-mentioned charge at my ordination, would not be against my following it; that I thought it hard the tipplers should have twenty or thirty tippling-houses, the papists one meeting-house, and the dissenters three or four, in my parish, undisturbed, and that I should be disturbed, because I would not have God’s Word confined to one house; and that, with respect to the canons, it would be absurd to put them in force against preaching clergymen, when they were set aside with respect to catechising, tippling, gaming, and carding clergymen; that I did not desire his Lordship to patronize me, in an especial manner, in the use of my Christian liberty; but that I hoped he would connive at it. “Whether they received my letter or not, I do not know; but they never attempted to molest me. “Be modestly and steadily bold for God, and your enemies will be more afraid of you than you of them; or if God will honour you with the badge of persecution, He will comfort and bless you the more for it. May the God of all grace and power be with you more and more! Ask it, dear Sir, for your brother and servant in Christ, “J. FLETCHER.”[208] Footnote 208: Fletcher’s Works, vol. viii., p. 257.