Wesley's remark upon this characteristic of Fletcher's style is: "This facility of raising useful observations from the most trifling incidents was one of those peculiarities in him which cannot be proposed to our imitation.... What was becoming and graceful in Mr. Fletcher would be disgustful almost in any other."]
[Footnote 8: In Archdeacon Pratt's "Eclectic Notes," pp. 185-189, there is an interesting discussion of one of the questions referred to above, viz. the advantages and disadvantages of religious societies. Mr. Venn is quoted as saying, "Dr. Woodward's societies were the first we read of. They might have existed to this day, had not Mr. Wesley's arisen."]
[Footnote 9: More than half a century afterwards, when all the parties to this controversy had passed away, and time had given opportunity for a calm estimate of the whole matter, Mr. Watson, at once the most competent and the most reverential of Wesley's biographers, expressed himself as follows, concerning the "Minutes" of 1770: "That there were passages calculated to awaken suspicion, and that they gave the appearance of inconsistency to Mr. Wesley's opinions, and indicated a tendency to run to one extreme in order to avoid another--an error which Mr. Wesley more generally avoided than most men,--cannot be denied....
"Mr. Wesley acknowledged that the 'minutes' were 'not sufficiently guarded.' This must be felt by all; they were out of his usual manner of expressing himself, and he had said the same truths often, in a clearer, and safer, and even stronger manner. He certainly did not mean to alter his previous opinions, or formally to adopt other terms in which to express them, and therefore to employ new modes of speaking, though for a temporary purpose, was not without danger, although they were capable of an innocent explanation."]
[Footnote 10: "Wesley's Designated Successor," pp. 177-179.]
[Footnote 11: Referring to the death of Whitefield in 1770.]
[Footnote 12: "Wesley's Designated Successor," p. 487.]
[Footnote 13: Rev. W. Tranter, _Methodist Magazine_, 1837, p. 903.]
[Footnote 14: Fletcher had written a poem in French on the peace which, in January, 1783, had been concluded with America, France, and Spain. At the time of Charles Wesley's letter, an English version of it, by the Rev. J. Gilpin, was in the press. It appeared shortly after Fletcher's death.]