Among the "rules for a holy life," written in English, the following may be quoted:
"Mortify thy five senses till crucified with Christ;
Sit at Christ's feet; cast away thy own will; consult His at every word, morsel, motion; ask His leave even in lawful actions.
Renounce thyself in all that can hinder thy union with God. Desire nought but His love.
Mortify all affection toward inward, sensible, spiritual delights in grace; they rather please and comfort than sanctify.
The life of God consists not in high knowledge, but profound meekness, holy simplicity, and ardent love to God.
Receive afflictions as the best guides to perfection.
The little book from which these extracts are taken was Fletcher's companion in his hours of private prayer and communion with God. It was written, not for others, but for himself. For a century past it has been in safe and reverent keeping, and is now as he left it. Its pages are worn by his touch. With these hymns and meditations he nourished his soul in secret. With these rules he loved to bind his free Christian spirit. Like other saintly men, he found that the impulses, even of the regenerate life, may not be left to themselves with entire confidence in their sufficient working. He sought to strengthen them by meditation, to sustain them by spiritual exercises and discipline; he furnished them with tests and standards, and made self-examination definite and precise. He sought perfection at once in supreme love to God, and in the minutest details of character and conduct. Let this be borne in mind in connexion with the fact that Fletcher was a leader of the Evangelical Revival, and a founder and father of Methodism. Evangelical religion has been charged with indifference to painstaking spiritual culture. Its doctrine of salvation by faith has been thought to carry with it self-confidence, familiar ways with God, and easy dealing with one's own soul. It is supposed to compensate for its insistence upon conversion, by sanctioning subsequent laxity in the matter of prayer and fasting. It is charged with spiritual shallowness, and asked why, with all its innumerable activities, it fails to produce the deeper and more disciplined devoutness of which Thomas à Kempis in the Roman, and Andrewes and Keble in the Anglican, communities are great examples.