Christian Leaders of the Eighteenth Century

Eleven Biographies in One Volume

J. C. Ryle

• Publisher: Aneko Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781622457687
• eBook ISBN: 9781622457694
• Topic: Theology & Religion

Biographies of George Whitefield, John Wesley, William Grimshaw, William Romaine, Daniel Rowlands, John Berridge, Henry Venn, Samuel Walker, James Hervey, Augustus Toplady, and John Fletcher.The reader will soon discover that I am an enthusiastic admirer of the men whose lives and ministries I have narrated in this volume. I confess it honestly. I am a thorough admirer of them. I firmly believe that, with the exceptions of Martin Luther and his contemporaries and our own martyred Reformers, the world has not seen any such men since the days of the apostles. I believe there have not been any who have preached as much clear scriptural truth, none who have lived such lives, none who have shown such courage in Christ's service, none who have suffered as much for the truth, and none who have done as much good. If anyone can name better men, he knows more than I do.I now send forth this volume with an earnest prayer that God will pardon all its imperfections, use it for His own glory, and raise up in His church today men like those who are here described. Certainly when we look at the state of the church today, we may well say, "Where is the Lord God of Whitefield and of Rowlands, of Grimshaw and of Venn? O Lord, revive Your work!"—J. C. Ryle
Stradbroke Vicarage, August 10, 1868

Chapter 22

John Fletcher, Part 1

I do not believe that anyone ever thoughtfully reads his Bible without being struck by the deep beauty of the fourteenth chapter of John’s gospel. I imagine that not many readers of that marvelous chapter fail to notice the wondrous saying of our Lord: In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you (John 14:2). The heart that is not excited and stirred up by these words must be cold and dull.

This beautiful saying has lately been painfully twisted from its true meaning. Men of whom better things might have been expected have sadly misapplied it and have given it a false meaning. They have dared to say that people of all faiths and creeds will eventually find a place in heaven, and that “every man shall be saved by the law or sect that he professes, so that he is diligent to frame his mind according to that law and the light of nature.”29 They would have us believe that the inhabitants of heaven will be a mixed body that includes heathen idolaters and Muslims as well as Christians, and that it will be made up of members of every religion in the world, no matter how opposite and antagonistic their respective opinions may be. Such theology is miserable indeed! Terrible is the expectancy that it holds out to us of eternity! The harmony in such a heterogeneous assembly would be small indeed! If this belief were true, heaven would be no heaven at all.

However, we must not allow human misinterpretations to make us overlook great truths. It is true, in a most comfortable sense, that there are many mansions in our Father’s house, and that all who are washed in Christ’s blood and renewed by Christ’s Spirit will find a place in heaven, even though they may not see eye to eye upon earth. There is room in our Father’s house for all who trust the Head, no matter how much they may differ on points of minor importance.

There is room for Calvinists and room for Arminians, room for Episcopalians and room for Presbyterians, room for Thomas Cranmer and room for John Knox, room for John Bunyan and room for George Herbert, room for Henry Martyn and room for Dr. Adoniram Judson, room for Edward Bickersteth and room for Robert McCheyne, room for Thomas Chalmers of Edinburgh and room for Daniel Wilson of Calcutta. Yes! Thank God, our Father’s house is a very large one. There is room in it for all who are truehearted believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thoughts such as these come crowding into my mind as I take up my pen to write an account of the eleventh spiritual hero of the eighteenth century whom I want to introduce to my readers – John Fletcher, minister of Madeley. I cannot forget that there was a doctrinal gulf between him and my last hero, Augustus Toplady, and that while one was a Calvinist of Calvinists, the other was an Arminian of Arminians. However, I will never shut my eyes to the fact that Fletcher was a Christian as well as an Arminian. As mistaken as I think he was on some points, he was certainly completely right on others. He was a man of rare grace and a minister of rare usefulness. No account of English religion in the eighteenth century could be considered just, fair, and complete that did not supply some information about John Fletcher of Madeley.

John William Fletcher was born at Nyon, Switzerland, on September 12, 1729. His real name was De La Flechiere, and he is probably known by that name among his own countrymen to this day. In England, however, he was always called Fletcher, and for the sake of convenience, I will call him by that name. His father was first an officer in the French army, and afterward a colonel in the militia of his own country. The family is said to have been one of the most respectable in the canton of Berne, and a branch of an earldom of Savoy.

Even as a boy, Fletcher appears to have been remarkable for his intelligence. At the first school that he attended at Geneva, he won all the prizes and was complimented by the teachers and managers in a very flattering manner. During his residence at Geneva, his biographer records:

He allowed himself only a little time for either recreation, refreshment, or rest. After studying hard all day, he would often spend the greater part of the night in writing down whatever had occurred in the course of his reading that seemed worthy of observation. Here he acquired that true classical taste that was so frequently and justly admired by his friends, and which all his deliberate plainness could never entirely conceal. Here, also, he laid the foundation of that extensive and accurate knowledge for which he was afterward distinguished, both in philosophy and theology.

From Geneva, his father sent him to a small Swiss town called Leutzburg, where he not only acquired the German language, but also diligently continued his former studies. After leaving Leutzburg, he continued some time at home studying the Hebrew language and perfecting his acquaintance with mathematics. Such was Fletcher’s early training and education. I ask the reader to pay special attention to it. It supplies one among many proofs that those who call the leaders of the English revival of religion in the eighteenth century poor, ignorant, illiterate fanatics are only exposing their own ignorance. They do not know what they are talking about. In the mere matter of learning, Wesley, Romaine, Berridge, Hervey, Toplady, and Fletcher were second to few men in their day.

After young Fletcher’s education was completed, his parents hoped that he would immediately turn his attention to the Christian ministry, a profession for which they considered him to be very well suited. In this expectation, however, they were at first terribly disappointed. Partly from a sense of unfitness and partly from doubts about the doctrine of predestination, John Fletcher announced that he had given up all idea of being ordained, and instead wanted to go into the army. His theological studies were laid aside for the military works of Vauban and Cohorn, and in spite of all the objections of his friends, he seemed determined to become a soldier.

This strange determination, however, was frustrated by an extraordinary series of events. The same overruling hand that would not allow Jonah to go to Tarshish, but sent him to Nineveh in spite of himself, was able to prevent the young Swiss student from carrying out his military intentions. At first, it seems, after his parents firmly refused their consent to his entering the army, young Fletcher went away to Lisbon, and like many of his countrymen, offered his services to a foreign flag.

At Lisbon, on his offer being accepted, he soon gathered a company of Swiss recruits and obtained passage on board a Portuguese man-of-war that was about to sail for Brazil. He then wrote to his parents and asked them to send him money, but his request was denied. Unmoved by this, he determined to go without the money as soon as the ship sailed. However, on the morning that he was supposed to go to sea, the servant at breakfast let the kettle fall, scalding Fletcher’s leg so severely that he had to stay in bed for a considerable time. In the meantime, the ship sailed for Brazil, and strangely enough, was never heard of again!

Fletcher returned to Switzerland, in no way shaken or deterred by his Lisbon disappointment. Being informed that his uncle, then a colonel in the Dutch service, had obtained a commission for him, he joyfully set out for Flanders. Right at that time, though, peace was reached, and the continental armies were reduced. His uncle died shortly after, and John Fletcher’s expectations were completely frustrated. He gave up all thought of being a soldier.

Being now free from business, and all military hopes seeming completely at an end, young Fletcher thought it would be good to spend a little time in England. He arrived in this country in 1750, almost totally ignorant of the language, and began at once to look for someone who could instruct him in the English language. A boarding school kept by a Mr. Burchell at South Mimms (and afterward at Hatfield, in Hertfordshire) was recommended to him.

Fletcher remained with this gentleman for eighteen months, during which he not only acquired a complete mastery of English, but also became exceedingly popular in his tutor’s family and throughout the neighborhood as a bright, friendly, and pleasant man. While staying at Mr. Burchell’s boarding school, Mr. Dechamps, a French minister to whom he had been recommended, obtained for him employment as a private tutor in the family of Mr. Hill of Tern Hall, in Shropshire. His acceptance of this position in the year 1752, when he was twenty-two years old, was the turning point in his life, and affected his entire path, both spiritually and temporally, to the very end of his days.

Up to this time, there is not the slightest evidence that Fletcher knew anything of spiritual and experiential Christianity. As a well-educated man, he was of course acquainted with the facts and evidences of Christianity, but he seems to have been completely ignorant of the inward work of the Holy Spirit and of the distinctive doctrines of the gospel of Christ.

Happily for him, he seems to have been carefully and morally brought up and had a good deal of religion of a certain kind when he was a boy. From early in life, he was familiar with the letter of Scripture, and to this he traced his preservation from unbelief and from many sins and bad habits into which young men too often fall. Beside this, a succession of providential escapes from death, which his biographers have carefully recorded, undoubtedly had a restraining effect upon him.

Nevertheless, there is no reason to think that he really experienced a work of grace in his heart until he had been some time a resident of Mr. Hill’s house. Until this time, he had believed in God and feared God somewhat, but he had never felt the love in Christ Jesus shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). He had never really seen his own sinfulness, nor the preciousness of Christ’s atoning blood.

The first thing that awakened Fletcher to a proper conviction of his fallen condition was the simple remark of a servant in Mr. Hill’s household. This man, entering his room one Sunday evening in order to attend to the fire, found him writing some music. Looking at him with concern, the servant said, “Sir, I am sorry to see you so occupied on the Lord’s Day.” At first, his pride was stirred up and he resented hearing a reproof from a servant. Upon reflection, though, he felt that the reproof was just. He put away his music, and from that very hour he became a strict observer of the Lord’s Day. How true is that word of Solomon: Reproofs of instruction are the way of life (Proverbs 6:23).

The next step in John Fletcher’s spiritual history was his becoming acquainted with the people called Methodists. He later told John Wesley how this happened in the following words:

When Mr. Hill went to London to attend Parliament, he took his family and me with him. On one occasion, while they stopped at St. Alban’s, I walked around town and did not return until after they had left for London. They had left a horse for me, and I rode after them and caught up with them in the evening. Mr. Hill asked me why I stayed behind. I said, “As I was walking, I met with a poor old woman who talked so sweetly of ...

Table of contents

• Contents
• The Religious and Moral Condition of England at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century
• How Christianity Was Revived in England in the Middle of the Eighteenth Century
• George Whitefield – The Man
• George Whitefield – The Ministry
• John Wesley – The Man
• John Wesley – The Ministry
• William Grimshaw – The Man
• William Grimshaw – The Ministry
• William Grimshaw – The Writings and Witness
• William Romaine – The Man
• William Romaine – The Ministry
• Daniel Rowlands – The Man
• Daniel Rowlands – The Ministry
• John Berridge – The Man
• John Berridge – The Ministry
• Henry Venn – The Man
• Henry Venn – The Ministry
• Henry Venn – The Message
• Samuel Walker of Truro
• James Hervey of Weston Favell
• Augustus Toplady
• John Fletcher, Part 1
• John Fletcher, Part 2
• J. C. Ryle – A Brief Biography
• Other Similar Titles