Ebook Wesley's Designated Successor

"Jean Guillaume De La Flechere," Robert Southey, "was a man of rare talents, and rarer virtue. No age or country has ever produced a man of more fervent piety, or more perfect charity; no Church has ever possessed a more apostolic minister. He was a man of whom Methodism may well be proud, as the most able of its defenders; and whom the Church of England may hold in remembrance, as one of the most pious and excellent of her sons."

"Fletcher was a saint," said Isaac Taylor, "as unearthly a being as could tread the earth at all."

"Fletcher," remarked Robert Hall, "is a seraph who burns with the ardour of divine love. Spurning the fetters of mortality, he almost habitually seems to have anticipated the rapture of the beatific vision."

Dr. Dixon, one of the greatest of Methodist preachers, observed, "I conceive Fletcher to be the most holy man who has been upon earth since the apostolic age."

No apology is needed for publishing the life of such a man, unless it can be shown that a life worthy of him is already in existence.