“What you say about reducing a mother to despair has made me recollect, what I have often thought, that the particular fault of the Swiss is to be _without natural affection_. With respect to that preference which my mother shows me above her other children, I see clearly I am indebted for almost all the affection she expresses for me in her letters to my absence from her, which hinders her from seeing my faults. Nevertheless, I reproach myself severely, that I cannot interest myself in her welfare as much as I did in that of my deceased father. I am astonished at the difference. I believe the time is not yet come when my presence may be of service to her; and I flatter myself she will not be shocked at my refusal, which I have softened as much as I could. “I fear you did not rightly understand what I wrote about the proposal you made me at London. So far from making conditions, I feel myself unworthy of receiving them. I trouble myself with no temporal things; my only fear is that of having too much, rather than too little, of the necessaries of life. I am weary of abundance. I could wish myself to be poor with my Saviour. Those whom He hath chosen to be rich in faith, appear to me objects of envy in the midst of their wants.”[50] Footnote 50: Letters, 1791, p. 95. Fletcher wanted no salary for preaching in Methodist chapels; and, for the present, he refused to return to Switzerland. His reason for the latter might have been more filially expressed; but no one will doubt his sincerity, or that his motives were not pure. The next letter, written two days later, was addressed to Sarah Ryan, Wesley’s housekeeper at Bristol, and to her friend, Dorothy Furley. It is too full of eloquent piety to be abridged. “_October 1, 1759._ “DEAR SISTERS,—I have been putting off writing to you, lest the action of writing should divert my soul from the awful and delightful worship it is engaged in. But I now conclude I shall be no loser, if I invite you to love Him my soul loveth; to dread Him my soul dreadeth; to adore Him my soul adoreth.