Wesley's Designated Successor

Synopsis

Jean Guillaume de la Flechere, wrote 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.”

Eighteen years elapsed before another and larger Life viiiwas given to the public. This was undertaken in 1801 by the Rev. Joseph Benson, at the request of Fletcher’s widow, and of the Methodist Conference of that year. In 1804 it was published with the following title:—“The Life of the Rev. John W. de la Flechere, compiled from the Narratives of the Reverend Mr. Wesley; the Biographical Notes of the Reverend Mr. Gilpin; from his own Letters; and other Authentic Documents, many of which were never before published. By Joseph Benson.” This is the only Life of Fletcher which, in a separate form, has been circulated during the last seventy-eight years.

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