Wesley Corpus

Fletcher. Never did any man more perfectly suit his whole behaviour to the persons and the occasion: So that one might apply to him, with great propriety, the words of the ancient poet:-- Illum quicquid agit, quoquo vestigia tendit Componit furtim, subsequiturque decor.” I cannot translate this; but I can give the English reader a parallel, and more than a parallel:-- Grace was in all his steps, heaven in his eye, In all his gestures sanctity and love. “SoME time before he was taken ill,” says Mrs. Fletcher, “he mentioned to me a peculiar manifestation of love which he received in his own house, with the application of those words, “Thou shalt walk with me in white. He added, ‘It is not a little thing so to hang upon God by faith, as to feel no departure from him, and no rising in the heart against him. But this does not satisfy me; I often feel something far beyond this; yea, I sometimes find such gleams of light and love, such wafts, as it were, of the heavenly air; so powerful, as if they would just then take my soul with them to glory ! But I am not filled: I want to be filled with all the fulness of God.” In conformity to these sentiments, when he was in his last illness, he expressed himself thus: ‘I am filled, most sweetly filled.’ This conveyed much to my mind, as I understood by it the accomplishment of his large desires. “Some time before the beginning of his last sickness, he was peculiarly penetrated with the nearness of eternity. * This quotation from Tibullus is thus rendered by Dr. Grainger: “A secret grace his every act improves, And pleasing follows wheresoe'er he moves.”-EDIT. There was scarce an hour in which he was not calling upon us to drop every thought and every care, that we might attend to nothing but the drinking deeper into God. We spent much time in wrestling with God, and were led, in a peculiar manner, to abandon our whole selves, our souls and bodies, into the hands of God; ready to do, and willing to suffer, whatever was well pleasing to him.