“Now all his bonds were broken. His freed soul began to breathe a purer air. Sin was beneath his feet. He could triumph in the Lord. From this time, he walked in the ways of God, and, thinking he had not leisure enough in the day, he made it a constant rule to sit up two whole nights in the week for reading, prayer, and meditation. At the same time, he lived on nothing but vegetables, and on bread with milk and water. One end of his doing this was to avoid dining in company. Besides sitting up two entire nights every week, his custom was never to sleep so long as he could keep awake, and he always took a candle and book with him to bed. One night, being overcome with sleep before he had put out his candle, he dreamed that his curtain, pillow, and cap were on fire, but went out without doing him any harm. And truly so it was, for in the morning his curtain was found burnt, also a corner of his pillow, and a part of his cap, but not a hair of his head was singed. “Some time after this, he was favoured with a further manifestation of the love of God, so powerful, that, he said, it appeared to him as if his body and soul would be separated. Now all his desires centred in one, that of devoting himself to the service of his precious Master, which he thought he could best do by entering into holy orders.”[8] Footnote 8: Letter to Mons. H. L. de la Fléchère, 1786, p. 13. To complete the accounts of Fletcher’s conversion, in 1755, an extract from another letter must be added. In that year, writing to his brother, he insisted on the vanity of earthly pursuits, and then gave the following description of the change that had taken place in himself:— “I speak from experience. I have been successively deluded by all those desires, and sometimes I have been the sport of them all at once. This will appear incredible, except to those who have discovered that the heart of unregenerate man is nothing more than a chaos of obscurity and a mass of contradictions. If you have any acquaintance with yourself, you will readily subscribe to this description of the human heart. Every unconverted man must necessarily be either a _voluptuary_, a _worldly-minded person_, or a _pharisaical philosopher_: or, perhaps, like myself, he may be all of these at the same time; and, what is still more extraordinary, he may be so not only without _believing_, but even without once _suspecting_ it; indeed, nothing is more common among men than an entire blindness to their own real characters. How often have I placed my happiness in mere chimeras! How often have I grounded my vain hope upon imaginary foundations! I have been constantly employed in framing designs for my own felicity; but my disappointments have been as frequent and various as my projects.