“It was by reasonings of this nature that I endeavoured to conceal from myself the deplorable state of my heart; and I am ashamed, my dear brother, that I suffered myself so long to be deluded by the artifices of Satan. God Himself has invited me; a cloud of apostles, prophets, and martyrs have exhorted me; and my own conscience, animated by those sparks of grace which are latent in every heart, has urged me to enter in at the strait gate; but, notwithstanding all this, a subtle temper, a deluding world, and a deceived heart have constantly turned the balance, for above these twenty years, in favour of the broad way. I have passed the most lovely part of my life in the service of these tyrannical masters, and am ready to declare in the face of the universe that all my reward has consisted in disquietude and remorse. Happy had I listened to the earliest invitations of grace, and broken the iron yoke from off my neck.”[9] Footnote 9: Gilpin’s Translation of “The Portrait of St. Paul.” These extracts are long, but they are important. They contain all the known facts connected with Fletcher’s conversion. In writing to his brother, Fletcher remarked,—“At eighteen years of age, I devoted as much time as I could spare to read the prophecies of the Holy Bible;” and it is a curious fact that, in the year of his conversion, he wrote a long letter to Wesley, in which he gave a synopsis of the writings of “a great divine abroad,” who had “spent fifty years in making himself perfectly master of the Oriental languages, and in comparing and explaining the various predictions scattered in the Old and New Testaments.” Fletcher was well acquainted with this gentleman, and had many times conversed with him on the subjects of his lifelong study. Substantially, the young man had adopted the aged man’s views; and now, in a condensed form (filling, however, nineteen octavo printed pages), he presented them to Wesley. At the time, terrific wars were being waged, and, a month before the date of Fletcher’s letter, the great earthquake at Lisbon had occurred. At such seasons, devout men almost instinctively begin to study prophecies, and hence no wonder that Fletcher now felt more than ordinarily interested in what, “for some years, had often been the subject of his meditations.” He believed that “the grand catastrophe of God’s drama drew near apace,” and gave his reasons for such belief by referring first to Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, “which is a rough sketch of the world’s four universal revolutions;” secondly, to Daniel’s vision of the four beasts; and thirdly, to Daniel’s vision of the ram and he-goat, and the two thousand and three hundred days, at the end of which the “sanctuary” was to “be cleansed.” Fletcher, by elaborate calculations, shows that this cleansing was to take place between the years 1750 and 1770, and the following extract will indicate what, in his opinion, the cleansing meant:—