Wesley's Designated Successor: The Life, Letters, and Literary Labours of the Rev. John William Fletcher, Vicar of Madeley, ShropshireTyerman, L. (Luke)
Religion
Wesley's Designated Successor: The Life, Letters, and Literary Labours of the Rev. John William Fletcher, Vicar of Madeley, Shropshire
Tyerman, L. (Luke)
Fletcher, John, 1729-1785
“HAWKSTONE, _December 23, 1773_.
“REV. AND DEAR SIR,—I take the liberty of requesting you to distribute
among the poor of Madeley the enclosed two guineas, in such way and
manner as you shall judge fit and proper.
“I sent your last letter to my brother Rowland, who is now at
Tottenham Court chapel, and suppose he received it. However, I waive
saying anything of the subject of it, as it is my design to have
totally done with the controversy, which I am firmly persuaded has not
done me any good. Excuse me if I say, I wish you to examine closely
whether it has done you any. For my own part, I desire to be humbled
before God, as well as to ask your forgiveness and Mr. Wesley’s (to
whom I purpose making a visit of peace and love when I go to London),
for everything that has savoured of wrong or of my own spirit, in what
I have written relative to his ‘Minutes;’ and, though I believe your
sentiments to be erroneous, yet I esteem and honour you for all you
have said against sin; and for the stand you have made for practical
religion in this Laodicean, Antinomian age; and truly concerned should
I be, if any expressions have dropped from my pen, which might make
the readers think lightly of sin, under the notion of honouring the
Saviour from sin. But as God can bear me witness that I had no
intentions of this sort, so I am certain that whosoever makes Christ
all his salvation, can never at the same time make Him a minister of
sin; and I trust the hour will come when, under a deep sense of your
own sinfulness and nothingness, you will be glad to lay hold of some
of those comfortable Gospel truths, which now you look upon as
dangerous poison.
“In consequence of my former letter to you, I wrote to my bookseller
in London, and told Mr. Eddowes in Shrewsbury, to stop the sale of all
my publications concerning the controversy between us; and, unless God
shows me that it is a matter of duty so to do, I shall not revoke this
order; it being my earnest desire for the time to come, if it be
possible, to live peaceably with all men; and, though I cannot approve
some of Mr. Wesley’s doctrines, because I believe them to be contrary
to Scripture, and am sure they are contrary to my own experience, yet,
as I am persuaded that many who are the excellent of the earth are in
his connexion, I wish to confirm my love towards them on account of
the grace that is in them; and, whilst I reject their errors, still to
esteem their persons; and never to say or do anything that may hurt
that common cause for which we all ought to be contending, or which
may grieve the weakest or meanest of Christ’s people.
“These, dear Sir, are my present sentiments and intentions, and you
have my free permission to declare them upon the house-top.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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