"I trust you are resigned (after mine and my brother's departure) to gather up the wreck. Be sure the sheep will be scattered. All the beasts of the forest are waiting for them. Many will find shelter among the Moravians; many will turn to the Calvinists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Quakers. Most, I hope, will return to the bosom of their mother, the Church of England. Not one, but several sects will arise, _and Methodism will be broken into a thousand pieces_.
"It is impossible for you to know _now_, or to divine, or to conjecture what you are intended for. Therefore the less you think about it the better, for we penetrate, we prophesy, in vain. You must stand still, and see the design and the salvation of God.
"Had I a sufficient body, I would strive to visit you, that we might compare our thoughts. So far I _can_ see, that the Lord is preparing His people for some great event. But who shall live when the Lord doth this? I am far entered on my last stage, and expect every month to be my last. Providence (if you survive me) will call you to this place. My widow can tell you my mind, if worth your knowing, and show you my posthumous papers, if worth your seeing.
"Pray on, and help to a peaceful end, my beloved friends,
"'Spared to keep the people,' says my dear friend? _Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_ The longer our time, the greater our danger of failing. I have always feared for myself that I should live a little too long. Now I fear it for my brethren also.
"Be not too sanguine for the American Methodists. _First_, know their _real_ condition. You justly fear that _our_ Methodists should get into the prelatical spirit. I fear the fanatical spirit also. I cannot explain this in writing.
"You think I know nothing about the peace; I think you know nothing about it. Yet I wish your poem a good sale.[14]
"Happy would Sally be to die like her god-sister. I am not without hope that she will live to be a Christian. She presents her duty. We all join in love. I _need_ no invitation to Madeley. While I had strength I wanted opportunity. Now I have neither."
For two or three years longer this question, 'What was to become of the Methodists after Wesley's death,' continued to exercise his brother Charles. Perhaps some anxiety would have been spared him had he acted more upon the advice he gave to Fletcher: "The less you think about it the better, for we penetrate, we prophesy, in vain. You must stand still, and see the design, the salvation of God." To this he seems finally to have come, for in one of his last letters to his brother he says: "Keep your authority while you live; and, after your death, _detur digniori_, or rather, _dignioribus_. You cannot settle the succession; you cannot divine how God will settle it." Meanwhile, so far as Fletcher was concerned, he had little to learn, even from his dearest friend and counsellor, as to waiting for the Lord. No man was ever less inclined to "penetrate or prophesy." Whether he lived, he lived unto the Lord; whether he died, he died unto the Lord; living or dying, he was the Lord's. No room was left for anxiety about the future.