Fletcher;” and often said, that when he looked at the vicar of Madeley he was almost ready to think the Lord Jesus Christ stood before him in the person of His servant; and in hours of depression, when he found it difficult to pray, he was wont to sigh and cry, “God of Mr. Fletcher, bless me!”[283] Footnote 283: Miss Bradburn’s MSS., and MS. by Mr. Harrison, of Chester. The Methodist reader need not be told that Fletcher’s humble pupil rose to great eminence. Unquestionably he was the greatest pulpit orator that Wesley ever had. Dr. Adam Clarke, who knew him well, once said to a young preacher, who wished his opinion concerning Bradburn, “I have never heard his equal; I can furnish you with no adequate idea of his powers as an orator; we have not a man among us that will support anything like a comparison with him. Another Bradburn must be created, and you must hear him for yourself, before you can receive a satisfactory answer to your inquiry.” In 1817, all the sermons that Bradburn had published, whether separately or in the _Methodist Magazine_, were collected, and published in a 12 mo. volume of 332 pages; but, as Dr. Abel Stevens well observes, “The eloquence of Bradburn, like that of Whitefield, could not be printed.” John Fletcher rendered no small service to John Wesley and the Methodists by his brief training of the young shoemaker in 1773. While writing his “Checks,” Fletcher seems to have been obliged to curtail his correspondence with his friends. At all events, his published letters belonging to this period are few in number. The following were written in 1773. The first was addressed to his friend Mr. Vaughan, the officer of Excise at Atcham, with whom he became acquainted while he had the charge of the sons of Mr. Hill:— “MADELEY, . “MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,—At the beginning of the week I received your kind letter, and your kind present at the end of it. For both I heartily thank you. Nevertheless, I could wish it were your last present, for I find it more blessed to give than to receive; and in point of the good things of this life my body does not want much, and I can do with what is more common, and cheaper, than the rarities you ply me with. “Your bounty upon bounty reminds me of the repeated mercies of our God. They follow one another as wave does wave at sea; and all to waft us to the pleasing shore of confidence and gratitude, where we can not only cast anchor near, but calmly stand on the Rock of Ages, and defy the rage of tempests. But you complain, you are not _there_; billows of temptation drive you from the haven where you would be, and you cry out still, ‘_Oh wretched man! who shall deliver me?_’