“The question, which you mean to repeat at the end of the winter, is, I hope, whether you shall be welcome at Madeley? My answer is, you shall be welcome; for I have already lost almost all my reputation, and the little that remains does not deserve a competition with the pleasure I shall have in seeing you.”[71] Footnote 71: Letters, 1791, p. 107. Notwithstanding his dejection, and the opposition he had to encounter, Fletcher continued to labour with unflagging diligence. To his Friday night lecture he now added the catechising of children on Sunday afternoons, but relieved himself of the toil of preparing a second Sunday sermon, by reading the sermons of other men. He also began to see a prospect of commencing services at Madeley Wood and at Coalbrook Dale. Hence, in another letter to Charles Wesley he wrote as follows:— “MADELEY, _April 27, 1761_. “When I first came to Madeley, I was greatly mortified and discouraged by the smallness of my congregations; and I thought if some of our friends in London had seen my little company they would have triumphed in their own wisdom. But now, thank God, things are altered in that respect. Last Sunday, I had the pleasure of seeing some in the churchyard who could not get into the church. “I began a few Sundays ago to preach in the afternoon, after catechising the children; but I do not preach my own sermons. Twice I read a sermon of Archbishop Usher’s; and last Sunday one of the Homilies, taking the liberty of making some observations on such passages as confirmed what I had advanced in the morning; and, by this means, I stopped the mouths of many adversaries. “I have frequently had a desire to exhort in Madeley Wood and Coalbrook Dale, two villages of my parish; but I have not dared to run before I saw an _open door_. It now, I think, begins to open. Two small Societies of about twenty persons have formed of themselves in those places, although the devil seems determined to overturn all. A young person, the daughter of one of my rich parishioners, has been thrown into despair, so that everybody thought her insane, and, indeed, I thought so too. Judge how our adversaries rejoiced; and, for my part, I was tempted to forsake my ministry, and take to my heels; I never suffered such affliction. Last Saturday, I humbled myself before the Lord on her account, by fasting and prayer; and I hope the Lord heard my prayer. Yesterday, she found herself well enough to come to church. “You will do well to engage your colliers at Kingswood to pray for their poor brethren at Madeley. May those at Madeley, one day, equal them _in faith_, as they _now do_ in that _wickedness_, for which they (the Kingswood colliers) were famous before you went among them.