3. - To the Brethren in and About Madeley.
persevering and redeeming love; invited by the same Gospel promises, and encouraged by each other’s example, and by the example of that cloud of witnesses, who have passed into the kingdom of God by that precious door, let us by Christ return to God; let us in Christ find our reconciled God: and may that dear commandment of his, “Abide in me,” prove every day more precious to our souls. If we abide in him by believing that he is our way, our truth, and our life; by apprehending him as our Prophet or wisdom, our Priest or righteousness, our King or sanctification and redemption, we shall bear fruit, and understand what is meant by these scriptures: “In him I am well pleased:” “Accepted in the Beloved:” “There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus:” “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself,” &c. O the comfort of thus cleaving to Christ by faith; of thus finding that Christ is our all.
Love one another, my dear brethren, I entreat you: by the pledges of redeeming love which I have so often given you, while I said in his name, “The body of Christ which was given for thee; the blood of Christ which was shed for thee,” to reconcile thee to God, and to cement thee to the brethren: by these pledges of Divine love, I entreat you to love one another, and is the Holy Spirit is with you:” but if you plead the promise of the Father, which, says Christ, you have heard of me, he will be in you. He will fill your souls with his light, love, and glory, according to that verse which we have so often sung together,
Refining fire, go through my heart,
Illuminate my soul,
Scatter thy life through every part,
And sanctify the whole.
So shall we live and die in the faith, going on from faith to faith, from strength to strength, from comfort to comfort, till Christ is all in all to us all.
J. FLETCHER.
P. S. I earnestly recommend to you all my dear brother Greaves. Show him all the love you have shown to me, and, if possible, show him more, who is so much more deserving.
3. - TO THE BRETHREN IN AND ABOUT MADELEY.
NYON, Feb. 11, 1779.
MY DEAR COMPANIONS IN TRIBULATION, - Peace and mercy, faith, hope, and love be multiplied to you all in general, and to each of you in particular, from the Father of mercies, through the Lord Jesus Christ, by the Spirit of grace. I thank you for your kind remembrance of me in your prayers. I am yet spared to pray for you. O that I had more power with God! I would bring down all heaven into all your hearts. Strive together, in love, for the living faith, the glorious hope, the sanctifying, perfecting love, once delivered to the saints. Look to Jesus. Move on: run yourselves in the heavenly race, and let each sweetly draw his brother along, till the whole company appear before the redeeming God in Sion, adorned as a bride for the heavenly Bridegroom.
I hope God will, in his mercy, spare me to see you in the flesh; and if I cannot labour for you, I shall gladly suffer with you. If you will put health into my flesh, marrow into my bones, joy into my heart, and life into my whole frame, be of one heart and of one soul. Count nothing your own, but your sin and shame; and bury that dreadful property in the grave, the bottomless grave of our Saviour. Let all you are and have be his that bought you, and his members’, for his sake. Dig hard in the Gospel mines for hidden treasure. Blow hard the furnace of prayer, with the bellows of faith, until you are melted into love, and the dross of sin is purged out of every heart. “There is a river that maketh glad the city of God;” it is grace that flows from his throne. Jesus is the vessel, the heavenly ark: get together into him, and sweetly sail down into the ocean of eternity. So shall ye be true miners, furnace men, and bargemen. Farewell in Jesus. J. FLETCHER.
4. - TO THE REV. CHARLES WESLEY.
LONDON, Dec. 12, 1758.
MY DEAR SIR, - If my silence were owing to forgetfulness, I should blush at not availing myself more frequently of your permission to write; but the idea I entertain, that nothing but your great condescension can make my correspondence supportable, makes me sometimes act in a manner quite contrary to the sentiments of my heart.
Before I left Tern, the Lord gave me a medicine to prepare me to suffer what awaited me here.This humiliation prepared me so well, that I was not surprised to learn that a person in London had spread abroad many false and scandalous things of me during my absence: and that the minds of many were prejudiced against me. In one sense I took a pleasure in thinking that I was going to be rejected by the children of God, and that my Saviour would become more dear, under the idea, that as in heaven, so now on earth, I should have none but him. The first time I appeared in the chapel, many were so offended that it was with difficulty they could forbear interrupting me in my prayer, to tell me, “Physician, heal thyself.” I was on the point of declining to officiate, fearing I should only give fresh offence; indeed, I should have done so had it not been for my friend Bernon, who pressed me to stand firm, representing the triumph my silence would give my enemies, &c. His reasons appeared to me so cogent, that as your brother did not reject my assistance, I read prayers, and engaged to preach sometimes in a morning, which I have accordingly continued to do. The same day I arrived in London our poor friend Bernon took to his bed, as if the Lord had waited my presence to give the blow. Three days after the fever increased and appeared to be dangerous. The next day, which was Wednesday, he settled his temporal concerns. Friday evening he was free from fever and I had some hopes of his life; but on Saturday it appeared that the fever was the lightest part of his malady, and the physician said he would die of an inflammation in his bowels, which was the case on Monday, after an illness of eight days. I sat up with him three nights and saw him as often as I could by day; and blessed be God, I did not see him for a moment without the full assurance of faith. His soul was, in general, divided between the exercise of repentance and of faith in the blood of the Lamb; however, from time to time, repentance gave place to rejoicing; and when he appeared better, he expressed much fear of returning to life. Nevertheless, one day when I was not with him, he had a conflict with the enemy of his faith, which continued an hour or two, when he came off conqueror. The violence of the fever sometimes threw him into a delirium, and that was the case some hours before his dissolution. The last words he uttered, before the strength of his disease deprived him of speech, were, “O what love, what love!” I have in my heart a clear testimony that he died the death of the just. Thus to recompense me for the injury Satan has done me by a false friend, the Lord hath taken to himself a true one, whom he will restore to me again in the last great day. Such a loss is a real gain.
I sincerely rejoice in the health of Mrs. Wesley. Present my compliments to her - not those of the children of this world, but those of the servants of