“And now, sinner, think seriously with yourself what defence you will make to all this? Will you fly in the face of God and that of your conscience so openly as to deny one of the charges of rebellion, yea, of aggravated rebellion, I have advanced against you? Have you not lifted yourself up against the Lord of heaven? Have you not sided with His sworn enemies—the world and the flesh? What part of your body, what faculty of your soul, have you not employed as an instrument of unrighteousness? When did you live one day before God with the dependence of a creature, the gratitude of a redeemed creature, the heavenly frame of a sanctified creature? Nay, when did you live one hour without violating God’s known law, either in word, or thought, or action? Have not you done it almost continually by the vanity of your mind and the hardness of your heart, if not by the open immorality of your life? And, what infinitely aggravates your guilt, have you not despised and abused God’s numberless mercies? Have you not affronted conscience, His deputy in your breast? Have you not resisted and grieved His Spirit? Yea, have you not trifled with Him in all your pretended submissions or solemn engagements? Thousands are, no doubt, already in hell whose guilt never equalled yours; and yet God has spared you to see almost the end of another year, and to hear now this plain representation of your case. And will you not yet consider? Shall nothing move you to shake off that amazing carelessness and stupid disregard of your salvation? Will you never begin to ‘work it out with fear and trembling’? Will you slumber in impenitency till eternal woes crush you into destruction? Is death, is judgment, is the bottomless pit so distant that you dare put off from week to week the day of your conversion? You have read in God’s Word that there is mercy with Him that He may be feared; but where did you read that there is mercy with Him for those who fear Him not? Show me such a place; I shall not say anywhere in the Bible, but in any book written by a moral heathen. And yet you hope you can be saved in this way. “Sinner, despise me _here_ if thou wilt; call me _here_ an enthusiast, and laugh at the concern I feel for thy perishing soul; but _hereafter_ thou wilt do me justice, clear me before the Lord Jesus, and acknowledge that thy blood is upon thine own head, that thou art undone because thou wouldst be undone, because thou wouldst take neither warning nor reproof.” To give the reader a further idea of the faithfulness and searching character of Fletcher’s preaching at this early period of his Madeley ministry, the subjoined extracts are given from sermons preached during the first three months of 1762.