“Mr. Fletcher has been distinguished in the late theological controversies between Mr. Wesley and his followers, on the one part, and the Antinomians, or Calvinists, on the other. In these disputes, the Shropshire vicar made no inconsiderable figure; and we have freely and impartially done justice to his abilities. In politics, however, we have nothing to say in his favour. We are, indeed, sorry to observe that he is a mere Sacheverell; a preacher of those slavish and justly exploded Jacobitical doctrines, for which the memory of Sacheverell and his abettors will ever be held in equal contempt and abhorrence by every true friend to the liberties of mankind.”^[347]

“Mr. Fletcher’s present performance” (American Patriotism) “is, like his former piece on this subject, wordy, specious, and artful. He alternately attacks the champions on the other side of the question, Dr. Price and Mr. Evans; and he evidently thinks himself a match for them both. We are almost tired of the fruitless contest; but one word with Mr. Fletcher before we part. He is a little chagrined at our styling him a mere Sacheverell; and he takes pains, in this publication, to show his equal abhorrence of regal or of mobbish tyranny. We are glad to find this rev. gentleman thus disclaiming those principles, to which many of his positions and arguments obviously lead; and we charitably hope that he was not aware of the full extent and tendency of their operation. Mr. Fletcher is, by all report, a good man; but he will never, we suspect, obtain a good report merely for his politics, except with those who have already embraced the same system; for mankind are too much guided by Swift’s rule of pronouncing those right who think as we do, and every one wrong who differs from us. Poor encouragement, by the way, for our author to expend his ink, and wear out his pens, in order to convert those political heretics, the advocates for America.”^[348]

“I am no more ‘a mere Sacheverell’ than I am a mere Price. Dr. Sacheverell ran as fiercely into the high monarchical extreme as Dr. Price does into the high republican extreme. I have endeavoured to keep at an equal distance from their opposite mistakes, by contending only for the just medium, which the Holy Scriptures and our excellent constitution point out. If Dr. Sacheverell were alive, and his erroneous, enthusiastical, mobbing politics endangered the public tranquillity, as the patriotism of Mr. Evans and Dr. Price does at present, I would oppose the high churchman as much as I now do the two high dissenters.”^[349]

“On the 10th of May, 1774,” says Mr. Vaughan, “Mr. Fletcher wrote me thus: ‘My brother has sent me the rent of the little place I have abroad, £80, which I was to receive from Mr. Chauvet and Co., in London. But, instead of sending the draught for the money, I have sent it back to Switzerland, with orders to distribute it among the poor. As money is rather higher there than here, that mite will go farther abroad than it would in my parish.’”^[351]

“In 1776, he deposited with me a bill of £105, being, as I understood, the yearly produce of his estate in Switzerland. This was his fund for charitable uses; but it lasted only a few months, when he drew upon me for the balance, which was £24, to complete the preaching-house in Madeley Wood.”^[352]