Adieu. Your afiectionate brother, J. F."

17. Beside the uncomfortable state in which he some-
times found his soul, upon his first going to Madeley, he
was discouraged by the smallness of the congregations,
and the great opposition which he met with from per-
sons of different descriptions. The first of these causes
of discouragement, however, was soon removed. Within
a year, it seems, of his first settling there, he writes to
Mr. Charles Wesley, as follows :- —

" When I first came to Madeley I was greatly morti-
fied and discouraged by the smallness of my congrega-
tions ; and I thought that if some of our friends at Lon-
don had seen my little company, they would have tri-
umphed in their own wisdom ; but now, thank God,
things are altered in that respeot, and last Sunday I had
the pleasure of seeing some in the church yard, who
could; not get into the church. I began a few Sundays
ago to preach -in the afternoon, after catechising the
children ; but I do not preach my own sermons. Twice
I read a sermon of Archbishop Usher's, and last Sunday
one of the homilies, taking the liberty to make some
observations on such.passages as confirmed what I ad-
vanced in the morning, and by this means I stopped the
mouths of many adversaries."

The church now, in a little time, began to be so crowd-
ed that the church wardens, enemies, it seems, to God
and his truth, began to speak of hindering strangers
(persona of other parishes) from coming, and of repel-



68 LIFE OF REV. J. FLETCHER.
