_March 7th, 1780._--"I am sorry the building has come to so much more than I intended; but as the mischief is done, it is a matter to exercise patience, resignation, and self-denial; and it will be a caution in future. I am going to sell part of my little estate here to discharge the debt. I had laid by £50 to print a small work, which I wanted to distribute here; but, as I must be just before I presume to offer that mite to the God of truth, I lay by the design, and shall send that sum to Mr. York. Money is so scarce here at this time that I shall sell at very great loss; but necessity and justice are two great laws which must be obeyed. As I design on my return to England to pinch until I have got rid of this debt, I may go and live in one of the cottages belonging to the vicar, if we could let the vicarage for a few pounds."
_Sept. 15th, 1780._--"There is little genuine piety in these parts: nevertheless, there is yet some of the form of it; so far as to go to the Lord's table regularly four times a year. There meet the adulterers, the drunkards, the swearers, the infidels, and even the materialists. They have no idea of the double damnation that awaits hypocrites. They look upon partaking that sacrament as a ceremony enjoined by the magistrate."
_Feb. 14th, 1781._--"My friend Ireland invites me to join him in the south of France, and I long to see whether I could not have more liberty to preach the word among Papists than among Protestants. But it is so little that I can do, that I doubt much whether it is worth while going so far upon so little a chance. If I were stronger, and had more time, the fear of being hanged should not detain me."
It had occurred to Fletcher during his residence in Nyon that he might serve the cause of religion in Switzerland with his pen, seeing that the state of his health, and the opposition of persons in authority, made it impossible for him to preach the gospel, as it was in his heart to do. To awaken the clergy, to rouse them from their worldliness and scepticism, and bring them to some acquaintance with true religion, seemed of all things the most desirable. Humanly speaking, there was little hope for the Church in Switzerland until there was, at least, the leaven of an earnest ministry. To his friend and curate at Madeley, Mr. Greaves, he wrote: "There is occasion and great need to bear a testimony against the faults of the clergy here; and if I cannot do it from the pulpit, I must try to do it from the press. Their canons, which were composed by two hundred and thirty pastors at the time of the Reformation, are so spiritual and apostolic that I design to translate them into English, if I am spared."