X. “THIRD CHECK TO ANTINOMIANISM.”
1772.
WHEN Fletcher finished his “Second Check to Antinomianism,” in “Three Letters” to Walter Shirley, he began a “Vindication of the Doctrine of Christian Perfection.” This, however, for a time, was laid aside; but was afterwards completed, and embodied in his “Last Check to Antinomianism.” The reason for this postponement was a somewhat sudden determination to write upon the Unitarian Controversy, which was now as prominent as the Calvinian one. A brief biographical episode will explain the matter more fully.
Edward Elwall was born at Sedgley, in Staffordshire. He settled in business at Wolverhampton, where he acquired the reputation of great integrity in his dealings. He had not enjoyed the advantages of a learned education, but he possessed a serious and inquisitive turn of mind, and had good natural abilities. One of his first publications was intended to prove that the fourth commandment, appointing the seventh day of the week to be observed as the Sabbath, was binding on all generations. As long as he continued in business, he constantly shut up his shop on that day, and as regularly opened it on the succeeding one. For this he was called a Jew. About the year 1714, he became distinguished as an Unitarian, and published, “A true Testimony for God and His sacred Law, being a Defence of the first Commandment of God, against all Trinitarians under Heaven.” This drew on him the resentment of the neighbouring clergy, who procured an indictment against him for heresy and blasphemy, on which he was tried at Stafford Assizes. He pleaded his own cause, and was acquitted. After this, he removed to London, and became a member of the Seventh-day Baptist Church at Mill-yard, Goodman’s Fields. Towards the end of life, he attended the meetings of the Quakers, and was sometimes permitted to speak at them. He died in London, at an advanced age, about the year 1745.
Elwall’s work “against all Trinitarians under Heaven” had recently been re-published, and Fletcher was requested to answer it. Hence the following, hitherto unpublished, letter, addressed to “the Rev. Walter Sellon, at Ledsham, near Ferry-Bridge, Yorkshire.”
“MADELEY, January 7, 1772.
“MY DEAR FRIEND,—I thank you for yours. I hope Glazebrook[253] will be more moderate, on account of some rubs which his new Calvinistic zeal has procured him.
“My reason for troubling you soon with an answer is to make a request. I have laid by my Third ——[254], which is a vindication of the doctrine of Christian perfection. A pamphlet (the third edition) has lately been published at Birmingham, and meets with great success. The author is E. Elwall, a Socinian Quaker, who was tried for blasphemy at Stafford, and came off with flying colours, after fully denying the Godhead of Christ, and His atonement.
“Some serious people have desired me to answer the book. As I suppose your Dr. Preese[255]” (sic) “is one of his stamp, I want to see by your candle as well as my own. Could you send me, by the post, what you have published against him? By cutting the margin close, you might bring it to a tolerable size for a packet; and I should not grudge paying the postage. If you cannot do this, send me, at least, your best answer to the objection taken from John xvii. 3, and to the words ‘only God,’ which seem to exclude Jesus Christ.
“We must fight the Antinomians while the Calvinists put weapons into their hands against the truth. Mr. Hill has taken Mr. Wesley in hand very roughly. I have been with him. His answer to my ‘Vindication’ is expected every day, and is out, I suppose, in London. God give us wisdom! Set your razor against Mason, for what we mean as keenness (which is allowable) is directly construed as bitterness.
“When you send the packet, put upon the direction, ‘Not by London, but by + Post Bag, Manchester and Salop,’ or else they will make me pay double.
“I preach much, and see little fruit. The Holy Ghost is not given among us. These are hard times. God help us to more gospel and life, but not my lady’s gospel!
“I am yours in a hurry, “J. FLETCHER.”
Footnote 253:
The poor collier whom Fletcher so greatly befriended at Madeley, and who was one of the first students at Trevecca, in 1768.
Footnote 254:
The words are illegible, but, no doubt, his “Third Check to Antinomianism” is meant.
Footnote 255:
Probably meant for the celebrated Dr. Price, of whom more will have to be said anon.
Not to mention other matters referred to in this letter, there can be no doubt that Fletcher now began to write his Anti-Socinian Treatises; but, as will be seen hereafter, he never finished them. Other things, even more pressing, claimed his attention, and he was obliged to postpone his attack on the citadel of religious infidelity.
“I long to be out of controversy,” said Fletcher to Joseph Benson, in a letter dated February 1772,[256] and yet he continued it. He could not help himself. To say nothing of the duty he owed to Christ and Gospel truth, it was impossible, at present, to retire from the field of conflict without exposing himself to the taunt of recreant timidity. Besides, though his opponents had been vanquished, they would, in that case, have appeared victorious. No doubt, also, he was encouraged to proceed by his bespattered but beloved friend Wesley. In a letter to Lady Maxwell, Wesley wrote:—
“LONDON, February 8, 1772.
“MY DEAR LADY,—I commend you for meddling with points of controversy as little as possible. It is abundantly easier to lose our love in that rough field, than to find truth. This consideration has made me exceedingly thankful to God for giving me a respite from polemical labours. I am glad He has given to others both the power and the will to answer them that trouble me; so that I may not always be forced to hold my weapons in one hand, while I am building with the other. I rejoice, likewise, not only in the abilities, but in the temper, of Mr. Fletcher. He writes as he lives. I cannot say that I know such another clergyman in England or Ireland. He is all fire, but it is the fire of love. His writings, like his constant conversation, breathe nothing else, to those who read him with an impartial eye. And, although Mr. Shirley scruples not to charge him with using subtilty and metaphysical distinctions, yet he abundantly clears himself of this charge, in the ‘Second Check to Antinomianism.’ Such the last letters are styled, and with great propriety; for such they have really been. They have given a considerable check to those who were everywhere making void the law through faith; setting ‘the righteousness of Christ’ in opposition to the law of Christ, and teaching that without holiness any man may see the Lord.”[257]
Footnote 256:
Benson’s “Life of Fletcher.”
Footnote 257:
Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 326.
All, however, were not of Wesley’s opinion. In Ireland, Walter Shirley was a great favourite among the Methodists, for there he had preached with much success. Fletcher’s first and second “Checks” were addressed to Shirley; and the Irish Methodists, who, as yet, had neither heard nor seen their author, were divided in their sentiments respecting them. The Dublin Society wrote two letters to him, in answer to which he sent them the following:—
“To the Methodist Society at Dublin.
“MADELEY, March, 1772.
“MY DEAR BRETHREN,—Mercy and love be multiplied unto you, from Him who was and is to come, the Almighty!
“I should have acknowledged before now the favour of the two letters with which you honoured me, if I had not conveyed my thanks to you immediately by means of brother Morgan.[258] But thanks at second-hand do not satisfy my gratitude; permit me, therefore, to present them, if not in person, at least by some grateful lines personally written.
“I am much obliged to those of you who approve my little attempt to vindicate practical religion and the character of an eminent servant of Christ, who ministered unto you in holy things, and whom some of our mistaken friends in England exposed as the author of dreadful heresy. The thanks which some of you unexpectedly bestowed upon me on that occasion, I have laid at the feet of Jesus, to whom all praise belongs, who is the author of every good gift, and from whom comes all the help done upon the earth.
“When I took up my pen, I aimed at discharging my duty towards God and His misapprehended truth; towards my honoured father in Christ, Mr. Wesley, and his misunderstood ‘Minutes’; and though all the world should have blamed me, they would never have robbed me of the satisfaction of having at least attempted to clear my conscience.
“The manner in which part of you have refused me their thanks, is too civil and brotherly not to deserve mine. I wish many of our English brethren had been as moderate as you in their disapprobation of my letters to the Rev. Mr. Shirley. You will see in a ‘Second Check to Antinomianism’ some things that may reconcile you to the first; and I have just sent to the press a ‘Third Check,’ to what appears to me the favourite delusion of the Church; which I trust will cast more light on the delicate subject about which we divide.
“If we cannot see things in the same light, I hope we never shall, I beg we never may, disagree in love.
“I am glad you agreed to disagree about the giving or refusing me your undeserved thanks. Let every little rub of opposition heighten our love; every little clashing of sentiment make the heavenly spark show itself, and kindle our souls into that charity which hopeth all things, endureth all things, thinketh no evil, and is not provoked.
“If I have been obliged to bear a little hardly upon my dear honoured brother, Mr. Shirley, I beg that nothing I have written to him on account of his precipitancy, rashness, or hurry, may prevent you from looking upon him with the love and respect due to a minister of Christ. Recommending him and myself to your prayers, and taking the liberty to recommend to you mutual forbearance, a daily increase of brotherly love, and a continual growth in the genuine liberty of the Gospel, I remain, my dear brethren, your obliged, affectionate, and obedient brother and servant,
“JOHN FLETCHER.”[259]
Footnote 258:
One of Wesley’s itinerant preachers, well-read and popular, but now enervated, and settled in Dublin.
Footnote 259:
“Thirteen Original Letters written by the Rev. J. Fletcher.” Bath, 1791, p. 22.
It has been already stated that at the commencement of the year 1772, Fletcher was writing his “Vindication of the Doctrine of Christian Perfection;” and that this was laid aside for the purpose of writing against Socinianism. Very soon, however, he had to devote his attention to another subject. In the foregoing letter, dated “March, 1772,” he tells the Methodist Society at Dublin that he had sent his “Third Check to Antinomianism” to the press; and this is confirmed by the following extract from a letter by Wesley to his brother Charles:—
“BIRMINGHAM, March 17, 1772.
“I am to-day to meet Mr. Fletcher at Billbrook. Part of the ‘Third Check’ is printing; the rest I have ready. In this he draws the sword and throws away the scabbard. Yet, I doubt not, they will forgive him all, if he will but promise to write no more.”[260]
Footnote 260:
Wesley’s Works, vol. xii., p. 128.
Fletcher’s parochial duties were heavy, and yet he seems to have written his “Third Check to Antinomianism” in about a month. It must have been a strain to accomplish this. The work is no flimsy production, but is full of Scriptural arguments, which could not be framed, arranged, and adequately expressed without a vast amount of labour; and the book itself was of no mean size, consisting, as it did, of one hundred and fourteen small typed and closely printed pages. The following was its title: “A Third Check to Antinomianism; in a Letter to the Author of “Pietas Oxoniensis:” By the Vindicator of the Rev. Mr. Wesley’s Minutes. ‘Reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all long-suffering and Scriptural doctrine; for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine,’ 2 Tim. iv. 2, 3. ‘Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith; but let brotherly love continue,’ Tit. i. 13, Heb. xiii. 1. Bristol: Printed by W. Pine in Wine Street, 1772.”
Why was it written and published? Fletcher had replied to the “Circular Letter” and the “Narrative” of Shirley, and in doing so had vindicated Wesley’s “Minutes.” Shirley was now silent, but other antagonists started up. A small 8vo. pamphlet was published, with the title “A Letter to the Rev. Mr. Fletcher, of Madeley, on the Differences subsisting between him and the Hon. and Rev. Mr. Shirley.” The author subscribed himself “An enemy to no man, but a friend to religion;” and his letter was dated “Bath, February 3, 1772.” This religious gentleman alleged that, under the existing circumstances, the publication of Fletcher’s answer to Shirley’s “Circular Letter” “was highly censurable, yea, criminal.” He accused Fletcher of “wantonly scattering firebrands, arrows, and death;” his defence of Wesley’s “Minutes” was “flimsy;” and he was actuated by “personal envy or enmity more than by a love to Christ and a godly zeal to promote truth.” Fletcher, properly enough, declined to notice the virulent and frothy pamphlet of this Bath religionist; but another publication, issued about the same time, demanded his attention. Its author was his friend and neighbour, Richard Hill, Esq., and its title as follows: “Five Letters to the Reverend Mr. F——r, relative to his Vindication of the Minutes of the Reverend Mr. John Wesley. Intended chiefly for the comfort of mourning backsliders, and such as may have been distressed and perplexed by reading Mr. Wesley’s Minutes, or the Vindication of them. By a Friend. London: 1772.” 8vo., 40 pp.[261]
Footnote 261:
A second edition, “revised and much enlarged,” was published about the same time as Fletcher’s “Third Check.” The first edition consisted of forty pages, the second of fifty-two. There is nothing of importance, however, in the second issue which is not in the first, except a few acrid references to Wesley. The following may be taken as a specimen: “I shall make no remarks upon the poor, loose, flimsy manner in which the ‘Minutes’ are worded; but I cannot help observing that it seems almost impossible for Mr. Wesley to write a page without contradicting himself” (p. 50).
Mr. Hill’s first letter is dated “December 2, 1771.”[262] His pamphlet is remarkable for two things—only two:—First, the highest Christian urbanity towards Fletcher; and secondly, the writer’s curious theology. A few extracts from Mr. Hill’s letters will suffice to show that Fletcher’s task of answering his courteous opponent was not a difficult undertaking.
Footnote 262:
In the second edition it is dated “Feb., 1772.”
“God alone knows the sorrow of heart wherewith I address you; and how much the fear of casting stumbling-blocks before some who are really sincere, and the apprehensions of giving malicious joy to others who desire no greater satisfaction than to see the children of the Prince of Peace divided among themselves, had well-nigh prevailed upon me to pour out my soul in silence instead of publicly taking up the pen against you. But when I perceived the solicitude with which Mr. Wesley’s preachers recommended your letters to Mr. Shirley in their respective congregations, and, above all, how many of God’s people had been perplexed and distressed by reading them,—I say, when I perceived this to be the case, and had prayed to the Giver of all wisdom for direction, I could not but esteem it my indispensable duty to send out a few observations on your book, especially as no other person, that I know of, had made any reply to the doctrinal parts of it from the time of its publication. With regard to the ‘Circular Letter,’ I shall studiously avoid the very mention of it; as whether the sending of it were in itself a wrong step or a right one, is of no consequence in the matter of salvation. Neither shall I follow you page by page, but taking the ’Minutes’ in the order they stand, shall dwell upon them, more or less, as appears necessary.”
The plan here propounded is carried out, but want of space renders it impossible to give an outline of Mr. Hill’s theology. The following quotations must be taken as specimens of others which might be given:—
“Your argument is this; that, ‘believing is previous to justification.’ But, dear Sir, this is begging the question; and, permit me to say, that I deny the assertion. Waving all disputes concerning eternal justification, or justification in the mind and purpose of God, I maintain, that, believing cannot possibly be previous to justification; and you must yourself maintain the same, unless you will adopt the phrase of an unjustified believer; whereas the Holy Ghost teaches that all who believe are justified. We may as well suppose that a man eats before he takes any food, and that he sees before he receives the light of the sun, as that he believes before he is justified: for believing, and feeding upon Christ, are not more inseparably connected than eating and taking bodily food, or than seeing and receiving light are inseparably connected. Yea, true faith can no more subsist without its object Christ, than there can be a marriage without a husband. From hence, I conclude, that the doctrine of believing before justification, and thereby making the grace of faith a conditional work, is not less contrary to reason than it is to Scripture itself.”
“I most sincerely abhor the Minute, ‘that we are every hour and every moment pleasing or displeasing to God, according to our works; according to the whole of our inward tempers, and our outward behaviour;’ and, yet, I equally abhor the assertion, ‘that David did not displease God more when he committed adultery with Bathsheba, and imbrued his hands in her husband’s blood, than when he danced before the ark.’ I know, from Scripture authority, that when David committed the sin you allude to, the thing which he had done displeased the Lord. But, though I believe that David’s sin displeased the Lord, must I therefore believe that David’s person came under the curse of the law? and that, because he was ungrateful, God, whose gifts and callings are without repentance, was unfaithful? Surely no. David was still a son, though a perverse one. Like backsliding Ephraim, he was still a pleasant child, though he went on frowardly.”
“Either Christ has fulfilled the whole law, and borne the curse, or He has not. If He has not, no soul can ever be saved; if He has, then all debts and claims against His people, be they more or be they less, be they small or be they great, be they before or be they after conversion, are for ever and for ever cancelled. All trespasses are forgiven them. They are justified from all things. They already have everlasting life. They are now (virtually) sat down in heavenly places with Christ their Forerunner; and as soon shall Satan pluck His crown from His head, as His purchase from His hand.”
Such were some of the absurd and pernicious doctrines propounded by Mr. Hill, and which Fletcher felt it his duty to refute. Towards Wesley, there is, in Mr. Hill’s pamphlet, an occasional stroke of bitterness, as, for instance, where he asserts that “there is a much nearer resemblance between the doctrines of Mr. John Wesley and mother Church”, (Popery) “than the popish Superior chose to acknowledge;”[263] but towards Fletcher, Mr. Hill, throughout, displays the most respectful kindness, and concludes his fifth and last letter thus:—
“And now, dear Sir, I cannot conclude these letters without expressing my earnest desire that the contents of them may never cause any decrease of love and Christian fellowship between us. Pardon then, my dear Sir, I ardently beseech you, O pardon all that you have found amiss in the unworthy author of these epistles; and much, I am sure, your charity will have to overlook. If we cannot see things alike now, I hope the time is not far off when we shall be thoroughly united in sentiment, as well as in heart, and each of us, casting our crowns before the throne, shall join our voices in that one harmonious song of praise, with which the regions of bliss shall echo without intermission, and without end, ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.’ ‘Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever.’
“In the meanwhile, let me acknowledge before the world that there is not a man living to whom I am more indebted for repeated instances of affection, and labours of love, than I am to dear Mr. Fletcher; and, therefore, notwithstanding all differences of judgment between us, I trust he will always give me leave to subscribe myself his most affectionate friend and brother, in the bonds of the Gospel of peace,
“The Author of Pietas Oxoniensis.”
Footnote 263:
The reference here is to Father Walsh, the Benedictine monk at Paris; and, it may be added, that, in a foot-note, Mr. Hill acknowledges himself to have been the author of the “Conversation” with that gentleman, recently published.
This was worthy of Mr. Hill, who, eleven years afterwards, succeeded to the title and estates of his father, and became Sir Richard Hill, Bart.
Though Mr. Hill’s first letter to Fletcher was dated as recently as December 2, 1771, the whole five were published, and Fletcher’s answer to them committed to the press as early as the month of March,[264] 1772. Fletcher begins his “Third Check to Antinomianism” as follows:—
“HONOURED AND DEAR SIR,—Accept my sincere thanks for the Christian courtesy with which you treat me in your five letters.
“Some of our friends will undoubtedly blame us for not yet dropping the contest; but others will candidly consider that controversy, though not desirable in itself, yet properly managed, has, a hundred times, rescued truth, groaning under the lash of triumphant error. We are indebted to our Lord’s controversies with the Pharisees and Scribes for a considerable part of the four Gospels; and, to the end of the world, the Church will bless God for the spirited manner in which St. Paul, in his Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, defended the controverted point of a believer’s present justification by faith; as well as for the steadiness with which St. James, St. John, St. Peter, and St. Jude carried on their important controversy with the Nicolaitans, who abased St. Paul’s doctrine to Antinomian purposes.
“Had it not been for controversy, Romish priests would, to this day, feed us with Latin masses and a wafer-god. Some bold propositions, advanced by Luther against the doctrine of indulgences, unexpectedly brought on the Reformation. They were so irrationally attacked by the infatuated papists, and so scripturally defended by the resolute Protestants, that these kingdoms opened their eyes, and saw thousands of images and errors fall before the ark of evangelical truth.
“From what I have advanced in my Second Check, it appears, if I am not mistaken, that we stand now as much in need of a reformation from Antinomianism, as our ancestors did of a reformation from Popery; and I am not without hope that the extraordinary attack which has been made upon Mr. Wesley’s anti-Crispian propositions, and the manner in which they are defended, will open the eyes of many, and check the rapid progress of so enchanting and pernicious an evil. This hope inspires me with fresh courage; and, turning from the Hon. and Rev. Mr. Shirley, I presume to face (I trust in the spirit of love and meekness) my new respectable opponent.”
Footnote 264:
The date, at the end of the Third Check, is “Madeley, February 3, 1772.”
Fletcher’s first purpose, in this important controversy, was to attack Antinomianism; now he was obliged to attack Calvinism, which, though the parent of Antinomianism, did not in the present instance approve of it. It is needless to recapitulate Fletcher’s arguments in favour of the two doctrines, that all mankind are redeemed by the infinite sacrifice of the incarnate Son of God, and that, through the same sacrifice, “the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal” (1 Cor. xii. 7). A few brief extracts, however, will help to illustrate his spirit, and his style of writing.
“The grace of God is as the wind, which bloweth where it listeth; and it listeth to blow, with more or less force successively, all over the earth. You can as soon meet with a man that never felt the wind, or heard the sound thereof, as with one that never felt the Divine breathings, or heard the still small voice, which we call the grace of God. To suppose the Lord gives us a thousand tokens of His eternal power and Godhead, without giving us a capacity to consider, and grace to improve them, is not less absurd than to imagine that when He bestowed upon Adam all the trees of paradise for food, He gave him no eyes to see, no hands to gather, and no mouth to eat their delicious fruits.”
“Waiving the case of infants, idiots, and those who have sinned the sin unto death, was there ever a sinner under no obligation to repent and to believe in a merciful God? Oh, ye opposers of free grace, search the universe with Calvin’s candle, and among your reprobated millions, find out the person who never had a merciful God; and show us the unfortunate creature, whom a sovereign God bound over to absolute despair of His mercy from the womb. If there is no such person in the world; if all men are bound to repent and to believe in a merciful God, there is an end of Calvinism. An unprejudiced man can require no stronger proof that all are redeemed from the curse of the Adamic law, which admitted of no repentance; and that the covenant of grace, which admits of, and makes provision for it, freely extends to all mankind.
“Out of Christ’s fulness all have received grace, a little leaven of saving power, an inward monitor, a divine reprover, a ray of true heavenly light, which manifests first moral, and then spiritual good and evil. St. John bears witness of that light, and declares it was the spiritual life of man, the true light which enlighteneth not only every man that comes into the Church, but every man that comes into the world—without excepting those who are yet in darkness. For the light shineth in darkness, even when the darkness comprehends it not. The Baptist also bore witness of that light, that all men through it, not through him, might believe; φως, light, being the last antecedent, and agreeing perfectly with δι’ αυτου.”
The reader has already seen Mr. Hill’s strange and pernicious doctrine respecting eternal justification. Fletcher treats this Calvinistic dream with terrible though polite severity. Without attempting to condense his arguments, the following extract will serve to show his perfect victory over his respected opponent:—
“You go on, ‘If Christ fulfilled the whole law and bore the curse, then all debts and claims against His people, be they more or be they less, be they small or be they great, be they before or be they after conversion, are for ever and for ever cancelled.’
“Your doctrine drags after it all the absurdities of eternal, absolute justification. It sets aside the use of repentance and faith, in order to pardon and acceptance. It represents the sins of the elect as forgiven not only before they are confessed, but even before they are committed. It supposes that all the penitents who have believed that they were once children of wrath, and that God was displeased at them when they lived in sin, have believed a lie. It makes the preaching of the Gospel one of the most absurd, wicked, and barbarous things in the world. For what can be more absurd than to say, ‘Repent ye, and believe the Gospel;’ ‘He that believeth not shall be damned;’ if a certain number can never repent or believe, and a certain number can never be damned?”
In concluding his Treatise, Fletcher remarks:—
“If I have addressed my Three Checks to the Rev. Mr. Shirley and yourself” (Mr. Richard Hill), “God is my witness it was not to reflect upon two of the most eminent characters in the circle of my religious acquaintance. Forcible circumstances have over-ruled my inclinations. Decipimur specie recti. Thinking to attack error, you have attacked the very truth which Providence calls me to defend: and the attack appears to me so much the more dangerous as your laborious zeal and eminent piety are more worthy of public regard, than the boisterous rant and loose insinuations of twenty practical Antinomians. The tempter is not so great a novice in anti-Christian politics as to engage only such to plead for doctrinal Antinomianism. This would soon spoil the trade. It is his masterpiece of wisdom to get good men to do him that eminent service. He knows that their good lives will make way for their bad principles. Nor does he ever deceive with more decency and success than under the respectable cloak of their genuine piety.
“If a wicked man pleads for sin, foenun habet in cornu, he carries the mark on his forehead; we stand upon our guard. But when a good man gives us to understand that there are no lengths God’s people may not run, nor any depths they may not fall into, without losing the character of men after God’s own heart, that many will praise God for our denial of Christ, that sin and corruption work for good, that a fall into adultery will drive us nearer to Christ, and make us sing louder to the praise of free grace; when he quotes Scripture too, in order to support these assertions, calling them the pure Gospel, and representing the opposite doctrine as the Pelagian heresy, worse than popery itself,—he casts the Antinomian net on the right side of the ship, and is likely to enclose a great multitude of unwary men; especially if some of the best hands in the kingdom drive the frighted shoal into the net, and help to drag it to shore.
“This is, honoured Sir, what you have done, not designedly, but thinking to do God service. Hence the steadiness with which I have looked in the face a man of God, whose feet I should be glad to wash at any time, under a lively sense of my great inferiority. I beg you not to consider the unceremonious plainness of a Swiss mountaineer as the sarcastic insolence of an incorrigible Arminian.
“By a mistake, fashionable among religious people, you have unhappily paid more regard to Dr. Crisp than to St. James. And, as you have pleaded the dangerous cause of the impenitent monarch, I have addressed you with the honest boldness of the expostulating prophet. I have said to my honoured opponent, ‘Thou art the man!’
“I owe much respect to you, but more to truth, to conscience, and to God. If, in trying to discharge my duty towards them, I have inadvertently betrayed any want of respect to you, I humbly ask your pardon; and I can assure you, in the face of the whole world, that notwithstanding your strong attachment to the peculiarities of Dr. Crisp, as there is no family in the world to which I am under greater obligations than yours, so there are few gentlemen for whom I have so peculiar an esteem, as for the respectable author of Pietas Oxoniensis.”
“Before I lay down my pen,” says Fletcher, in a “Postscript,” “I beg leave to address, a moment, the true believers who espouse Calvin’s sentiments. Think not, honoured brethren, that I have no eyes to see the eminent services which many of you render to the Church of Christ; no heart to bless God for the Christian graces which shine in your exemplary conduct; no pen to testify, that, by letting your light shine before men, you adorn the Gospel of God our Saviour, as many of your predecessors have done before you. I am not only persuaded that your opinions are consistent with a genuine conversion but I take heaven to witness how much I prefer a Calvinist who loves God to a Remonstrant who does not. If I have, therefore, taken the liberty of exposing your favourite mistakes, do me the justice to believe that it was not to pour contempt upon your respectable persons; but to set your peculiarities in such a light as might either engage you to renounce them, or check the forwardness with which some have lately recommended them as the only doctrines of grace, and the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ; unkindly representing their remonstrant brethren as enemies to free grace, and abettors of a dreadful heresy.
“And you, my remonstrant brethren, permit me to offer you some seasonable advices. 1. More than ever, let us confirm our love to our Calvinist brethren. If our arguments gall them, let us not envenom the sore by maliciously triumphing over them. Nothing is more likely to provoke their displeasure, and drive them from what we believe to be the truth. 2. Do not rejoice in the mistakes of our opponents, but in the detection of error. Desire not that we, but that truth may prevail. Let us not only be willing that our brethren should win the day if they have truth on their side; but let us make it matter of solemn, earnest, and constant prayer. 3. Let us strictly observe the rules of decency and kindness, taking care not to treat any of our opponents in the same manner that they have treated Mr. Wesley. The men of the world sometimes hint that he is a papist, and a Jesuit; but good, mistaken men have gone much farther in the present controversy. They have published to the world, that they verily believe his principles are too rotten for even a papist to rest upon; that he wades through the quagmires of Pelagianism, deals in inconsistencies, manifest contradictions, and strange prevarications; that if a contrast were drawn from his various assertions upon the doctrine of sinless perfection, a little piece might extend into a folio volume; and that they are more than ever convinced of his prevaricating disposition. Not satisfied with going to a Benedictine monk, in Paris, for help against his dreadful heresy, they have wittily extracted an argument, ad hominem, from the comfortable dish of tea he drinks with Mrs. Wesley; and, to complete the demonstration of their respect for that grey-headed, laborious minister of Christ, they have brought him upon the stage of controversy in a dress of their own contriving, and made him declare to the world, that, whenever he and fifty-three of his fellow-labourers say one thing, they mean quite another. And what has he done to deserve this usage at their hands? Which of them has he treated unjustly or unkindly? Even in the course of this controversy, has he injured any man? May he not say to this hour, Tu pugnas; ego vapulo tantum? Let us avoid this warmth, my brethren; remembering that personal reflections will never pass for convincing arguments with the judicious and humane.
“I have endeavoured to follow this advice with regard to Dr. Crisp; nevertheless, lest you should rank him with practical Antinomians, I once more gladly protest my belief that he was a good man; and desire that none of you would condemn all his sermons, much less his character, on account of his unguarded antinomian propositions.
“4. If you would help us to remove the prejudices of our brethren, not only grant with a good grace, but strongly insist upon the great truths for which they make so noble a stand. Steadily assert, with them, that the scraps of morality and formality, by which Pharisees and deists pretend to merit the Divine favour, are only filthy rags in the sight of a holy God; and that no righteousness is current in heaven but the righteousness which is of God by faith. If they have set their hearts upon calling it the imputed righteousness of Christ, though the expression is not strictly scriptural, let it pass; but give them to understand, that as Divine imputation of righteousness is a most glorious reality, so human imputation is a most delusive dream; and that of this sort is undoubtedly the Calvinian imputation of righteousness to a man, who actually defiles his neighbour’s bed, and betrays innocent blood. A dangerous contrivance this! not less subversive of common heathenish morality, than of St. James’s pure and undefiled religion.
“Again, our Calvinist brethren excel in setting forth a part of Christ’s priestly office; I mean the immaculate purity of His most holy life, and the all-atoning, all-meritorious sacrifice of His bloody death. Here imitate, and, if possible, surpass them. Shout a finished atonement louder than they. If they call this complete atonement finished salvation, or the finished work of Christ, indulge them still: for peace’s sake, let those expressions pass; nevertheless, at proper times, give them to understand that it is absolutely contrary to reason, Scripture, and Christian experience to think that all Christ’s mediatorial work is finished. Insinuate you should be very miserable if He had nothing more to do for you and in you. Tell them, as they can bear it, that He works daily as a Prophet to enlighten you; as a Priest to make intercession for you; as a King to subdue your enemies; as a Redeemer to deliver you out of all your troubles; and as a Saviour to help you to work out your own salvation; and hint that, in all these respects, Christ’s work is no more finished than the working of our own salvation is completed.
“The judicious will understand you; as for bigots, they are proof against Scripture and good sense. Nevertheless, mild irony, sharply pointing a scriptural argument, may yet pass between the joints of their impenetrable armour, and make them feel either some shame, or some weariness of contention. But this is a dangerous method, which I would recommend to very few. None should dip his pen in the wine of irony, till he has dipped it in the oil of love; and even then, he should not use it without constant prayer, and as much caution as a surgeon lances an impostume. If he goes too deep, he does mischief; if not deep enough, he loses his time; the virulent humour is not discharged, but irritated by the skin-deep operation. And ‘who is sufficient for these things?’ Gracious God of wisdom and love! if Thou callest us to this difficult and thankless office, let all our sufficiency be of Thee! and should the operation succeed, Thine and Thine alone shall be all the glory.”
Such advices were Christian and opportune. No doubt, they were meant for men like Thomas Olivers and Walter Sellon. Wesley, in a tract of twelve pages, had, in 1770, attacked Toplady’s “Abridgement of Zanchius on Predestination.” Toplady, in the same year, had replied to this, in a most bitter and scurrilous “Letter to the Rev. Mr. John Wesley.” Not having leisure for this kind of work, Wesley had requested Olivers to answer Toplady. Olivers, in 1771, had published his “Letter to the Reverend Mr. Toplady” (12mo, 60 pp.), and had treated Toplady with an amount of well-deserved tartness, which quite justified Fletcher in giving the above advice.
Then, again, Walter Sellon, in the same year, 1771, had published his “Church of England Vindicated from the Charge of Absolute Predestination, as is stated and asserted by the Translator of Jerome Zanchius, in his Letter to the Rev. Dr. Nowell. Together with Some Animadversions on his Translation of Zanchius, his Letter to the Rev. Mr. John Wesley, and his Sermon on 1 Tim. i. 10.” 12mo, 129 pp. In his small country parish, Ledsham, in Yorkshire, Sellon had dealt Toplady’s predestination theory heavy blows; and, it must be added, he had not been sparing in virulence. He began with telling the abusive vicar of Broad Hembury, “I shall deal plainly with you; more plainly, perhaps, than you might desire; yet not so plainly as you might justly expect. I would not say a word barely to enrage you; and yet, I doubt not, but I shall enrage you, because there is no coping with such writers as you, without speaking a little in your own manner; and I have always observed, those that are most prone to give offence are also most prone to take it.” Sellon fulfilled his threatening promise, and concluded: “Excuse my plainness, Sir, if I tell you farther, you seem much to stand in need of learning the lesson dictated by Solon of Athens, ‘Know thyself;’ and of praying heartily that prayer prescribed by our Church, ‘From all blindness of heart; from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness,—Good Lord, deliver us!’”
Fletcher, in this irritating controversy, never lost his temper. Some of his coadjutors and opponents did; and hence the Christian and needed cautions and advices at the end of his “Third Check to Antinomianism.”
XI. “FOURTH CHECK TO ANTINOMIANISM.”
1772.
THE issue of Fletcher’s “Third Check” was immediately followed by “A Review of all the Doctrines taught by the Rev. Mr. John Wesley; containing a full and particular Answer to a Book entitled, ‘A Second Check to Antinomianism. In Six Letters, to the Author of that Book. Wherein the Doctrines of a Twofold Justification, Free-Will, Man’s Merit, Sinless Perfection, Finished Salvation, and Real Antinomianism are particularly discussed; and the Puritan Divines vindicated from the Charges brought against them of holding Mr. Wesley’s Doctrines.’ To which is added ‘A Farrago.’ London, 1772.” 8vo, 151 pp. The letters are all signed “The Author of P.O.,” meaning, of course, Richard Hill.
Almost at the same time that the book, with this ponderous title, was published, Mr. Richard Hill committed to the press an 8vo tract of sixteen pages, entitled, “Some Remarks on a Pamphlet, entitled, A Third Check to Antinomianism. By the Author of ‘Pietas Oxoniensis.’”
Of the second of these publications nothing need be said. Considerable bitterness towards Wesley is displayed, and a modicum of severity towards Fletcher; but, perhaps, not more than might be naturally expected; for men dislike to be vanquished.
His first and much larger pamphlet, containing, besides the “Farrago,” “Six Letters” addressed to Fletcher, must have more attention. The “Letters” relate, not to the “Third,” but the “Second Check” of Fletcher, and were published only a few days before the appearance of the “Remarks” just noticed. Mr. Hill thus commences his first letter:—
“REVEREND SIR,—After many debates with myself, and much solicitation from my friends, you now hear from me again on your Second Check to Antinomianism. I make no other apology for writing, than that I think there is an absolute necessity an answer should be given to it. But, whilst I make my animadversions on your letters, may the Divine Author of love and meekness preserve me from the unhappy spirit in which they are written! Oh, my dear Sir, I never could have supposed that sneer, banter, and sarcasm, yea notorious falsehood, calumny, and gross perversions, would have appeared before the world under the sanction of your venerable name.”
In making such accusations, Mr. Hill ought to have known he was himself guilty of “notorious falsehood and calumny;” but he was angry, and anger is always blindfolding.
Mr. Hill next proceeds to denounce Wesley’s “doctrine of a second justification by works;” and asserts that “it has no existence in the Word of God, nor in any Protestant Church under heaven;” but that, in this matter, “Mr. Wesley and Mr. Fletcher have the whole Council of Trent on their side.”
With considerable ability, but with great bitterness and even reviling, especially so far as Wesley is concerned, Mr. Hill endeavours to refute Fletcher’s arguments in support of the doctrine just named, and then remarks:—
“I intended to have made several other extracts from your first letter; but as I really cannot find many lines together free from gross misrepresentations and perversions, and hardly one single paragraph exempt from cutting sneers and low sarcasms, I confess I have not patience to transcribe them; especially when I consider that they are addressed to one” (Walter Shirley) “who, notwithstanding your former unkind behaviour, hath treated you with all the politeness of a gentleman, and the humility of a Christian.”
This was an ebullition of bad temper. The charges are untrue, and the spirit is unchristian. Fletcher employed irony, but, as all candid readers of his Checks must acknowledge, it was always polite and decorous. None but irritated men, like Mr. Hill, can find “low sarcasms;” and as for “gross misrepresentations and perversions,” they have no existence.
In his Second Letter, Mr. Hill takes up the doctrine of free-will, and pronounces Fletcher’s statements, in support of the free agency of man, to be “as totally void of solid scriptural argument, as they are replete with calumny, gross perversions, and equivocations.”
In his Third Letter, Mr. Hill discusses what he is pleased to call Sinless Perfection,—a doctrine which neither Wesley nor Fletcher ever taught. Christian Perfection[265] they enforced and defended; but Sinless Perfection, using the word in its strict and literal sense, was not a dogma of theirs, but a verbal invention, adopted from Whitefield and others, by Mr. Hill and his angry friends, who desired to make their opponents the target of ridicule and scorn.
Footnote 265:
The reader who wishes to know what is meant by this is strongly recommended to read Wesley’s invaluable treatise, entitled, “A Plain Account of Christian Perfection;” his equally important and scriptural sermon on “Christian Perfection,” and his other irrefutable sermons on the same subject.
Mr. Hill begins with several revolting anecdotes respecting people who professed themselves to be perfect Christians,—stories which probably were true; but stories concerning perfect fanatics whom Wesley and Fletcher would have condemned as strongly as Mr. Hill. His Letter terminates with a series of the same sort of nauseous anecdotes. In a certain sense, it is smart, and Mr. Hill thought it so; for, in concluding it, he remarks:—
“Now, my dear Sir, I have given you a little in your own way; but, notwithstanding you have set me the example in this manner of writing, I shall be glad to set you the example of mutual forgiveness. By cutting and slashing, we shall never convince each other of our errors; and the end of our controversy will be, that the world will laugh at you for taking the sword of banter, the shield of perversion, the helmet of prejudice, and the breastplate of acrimony, in order to fight for the doctrine of sinless perfection; and I myself shall be laughed at, in my turn, for losing so much precious time in answering you.”
Mr. Hill’s fourth letter is a brief one, and is devoted to what he calls Fletcher’s “heavy bombs of bitter sneer and cutting sarcasm,” hurled at the doctrine of “the finished salvation of Christ.”
The fifth and sixth letters, and also the postscript, are not theological, but simply abusive. Fletcher is said to “have traduced all the most celebrated ministers of the Gospel” of that day; and to have “thrown stumbling-blocks into the way of thousands.” A “wretched spirit of low sarcasm and slanderous banter runs throughout” his whole writings. Wesley and Fletcher had “adopted a scheme of religion gathered out of Pelagianism, Semi-Pelagianism, Arminianism, Popery, Mysticism, and Quakerism.”
The “Farrago of Hot and Cold Medicines, by the Rev. Mr. John Wesley, extracted from his own Publications,” is, of course, principally levelled against Wesley. The spirit of it may be gathered from an extract from Bishop Hall, on the title-page of Mr. Hill’s ill-natured pamphlet:—
“I would I knew where to find you; then I could take a direct aim. Whereas now I must rove and conjecture. To-day you are in the tents of the Romanists; to-morrow, in ours; next day, between both, against both. Our adversaries think you ours, we theirs; your conscience finds you with both and neither. I flatter you not; this of yours is the worst of all tempers. Will you be a church alone? Alas! how full are you of contradictions to yourself! How full of contrary purposes! How oft do you chide with yourself? How oft do you fight with yourself?”
Of course, all this was provoking. Had Fletcher been of a much less combative disposition than he really was, it would have been impossible for him, as a man of honesty and honour, to lay aside his pen. Mr. Hill’s accusations were serious ones, involving Fletcher’s moral character; and a reply to them was imperative. But, before Fletcher’s “Fourth Check to Antinomianism” is introduced to the reader’s notice, another publication, which preceded it, must be mentioned. This was entitled “Friendly Remarks occasioned by the Spirit and Doctrines contained in the Rev. Mr. Fletcher’s Vindication, and more particularly in his Second Check to Antinomianism, to which is added a postscript, occasioned by his Third Check. In a letter to the Author, by ***********. A.M. London: 1772.” 8vo. 71 pp. The letter is dated, “London, July 4, 1772,” and the asterisks stand for the name of Rowland Hill, Mr. Richard Hill’s impulsive and eccentric brother, who had taken his degree at Cambridge, had been refused orders by half-a-dozen bishops, and was now nearly twenty-seven years of age. Berridge and Whitefield had been his friends, and even Wesley had approved of his preaching among his Societies.[266] At present, he was in London, discoursing to immense congregations in Whitefield’s two Metropolitan Chapels, and was resident in the Tabernacle House, in Moorfields.[267] There, no doubt, the pamphlet was written, which must now be noticed.
He begins with a reference to his extensive preaching tours; and states that he was frequently invited to preach in the meeting-houses of Wesley’s Societies, and that this occasioned him considerable perplexity, for to preach against Wesley’s “sentiments in his own congregations would be unfair.” He continues:—
“And yet, when I consider how many excellent Christians are contained in Mr. Wesley’s Societies, whom I love as my own soul, and to whom I have frequently given promises of my assistance and labours, how will it grieve me to be constrained to withdraw from them, whom I so much honour and respect.”
Rowland Hill proceeds to say, that “hitherto he had declined having the least share in the late contentions.” He was at Bristol in 1771, when Mr. Shirley and his friends invaded Wesley’s Conference, but he refused to join them, and left the city, for, he remarks, “Peace I love, but controversy I hate.” He continues:—
“Upon my return to Bristol, I saw your first publication.[268] As I dearly loved your character, I read it with great prejudice in your favour; but still, the tartness of the style, as well as the bad doctrine it contained, concerned me; but, as I plainly perceived your intention was to make the ‘Minutes’ speak as much Gospel as possible, though I was sorry for the performance, I felt a loving pity for the author. About the same time, I called upon Mr. Wesley, then in Bristol, and, in strong terms, expressed to him my concern about his ‘Minutes.’ He told me that he looked upon the whole of them as truth, and that he should vindicate them as such.
“Still my determination was to appear in no open separation from Mr. Wesley; hoping that time would soften the edge of the dispute, and restore calmness and composure among contending parties; but your second publication[269] compels me to believe that to be neutral any longer will be criminal. You have now done sufficient to darken every gleam of hope of future tranquillity, by publishing such doctrine, and in such a spirit, as has kindled no small flame in the religious world.”
Footnote 266:
Sidney’s “Life of Rowland Hill,” p. 56.
Footnote 267:
Ibid, p. 70.
Footnote 268:
The “Vindication” of Wesley’s Minutes.
Footnote 269:
“Second Check to Antinomianism, in Three Letters,” to Mr. Shirley.
No doubt Rowland Hill was perfectly sincere when he said he hated controversy, and loved peace; and yet, such is the tendency of polemical writing, Rowland Hill and his brother Richard became the principal fomentors of this controversial warfare.
Having given what he calls “a simple narration of facts,” Mr. Rowland Hill proceeds to say:—
“I will now make some strictures principally upon your last performance. This I pray God I may be enabled to do with meekness and judgment. I know there is no argument in banter, nor conclusion in sarcasm, nor divinity in a sneer: such weapons I wish totally to discard; they are pitiful even for the world, but they are scandalous when used by a Christian. I hate such feeble aids, and will scorn to use them; they would defile my soul, and stab the cause I mean to maintain. The meek and dove-like disposition of Christ, I humbly hope will teach me, while I write, to pity, not to abuse, the mistaken; and meekly to deliver my sentiments, without having recourse to the low arts of slander and reflection.”
Rowland Hill had good intentions; but whether he fulfilled them will be seen in the succeeding extracts.
“After having first dressed up Mr. Shirley according to your own fancy, and branded him with the opprobrious name of Antinomian, you place him at the head of a set of monsters invented by yourself; and, after having thus raised a hideous and unthought-of ghost, you remand it to the shades by your own spells and incantations of banter and contempt.”
“After having said so much as to place us in a manner even amongst murderers, on account of our principles of grace, it really shocks and almost disheartens me from following you any further. I will, therefore, now omit reminding you of the numberless sneers, taunts, and sarcasms, which so dreadfully decorate the whole of your performance; they are nothing better than the infernal terms of darkness; it is hateful to transcribe them; let darkness be their doom.”
“Consider in what detestable colours you have pictured us before the world. There is scarce an abomination but what we are charged with; and our enemies triumph at the supposed discovery. You are the man, they say, that has been among the Calvinists, has found out their hypocrisy, and are now publishing against them. Numbers of them, to my knowledge, carry about your book in ill-natured triumph, and cast in our teeth, as certain truth, the dreadful slanders you have invented. In short, Sir, you have brought over us such a day of blasphemy and rebuke as we never felt before.”
“Our characters now lie bleeding before you; we smart severely under the cruelty of your pen; and complain loudly against your great injustice. You have given us up to be trampled upon by the world, who, from your pretended discoveries, looks upon us all as hypocrites detected under the mask of religion. If you think us in error, for Christ’s sake, sneer at us no more; though it may be sport to you, it is, in a manner, death to us. Learn the more Christian lesson to pity us, and pray for us, and try to set us right in love.”
Rowland Hill, no doubt, intended to avoid in his pamphlet “the low art of slander;” but he failed in carrying out his purpose. Any one who has read, with candour, Fletcher’s first and second Checks to Antinomianism, must admit that Mr. Hill’s accusations are unfounded. Where had Fletcher slandered Rowland Hill, or any of his Calvinistic friends? It is true that he had treated some of the doctrines of the Calvinists with “banter” and with “sarcasm;” but his Calvinian friends, against whose tenets he had written, had, uniformly, been treated with respectful affection. Impetuous Rowland improperly applied Fletcher’s “banter” and “sarcasm,” not to doctrines, as Fletcher had intended, but to the men who held them, himself and his godly friends included; a thing from which Fletcher’s loving soul revolted.
The remainder of Rowland Hill’s “Friendly Remarks” chiefly consists of animadversions, intended to show “the glaring inconsistencies and palpable mistakes” of Fletcher, in the doctrines he had defended and enforced. It would be an almost endless task to dwell upon the theological criticisms of Fletcher and his opponents. As might be expected, Rowland Hill, in attacking Fletcher’s tenets, is often smart; and, it must be added, often bitter.
A reply to the pamphlets of Richard Hill and his brother Rowland became a necessity. Fletcher could not remain silent under such unfounded and undeserved imputations. Hence, though weary of the warfare, he at once resumed his pen, and began to prepare his “Fourth Check to Antinomianism.” The postscript of Rowland Hill’s “Friendly Remarks,” dated “July 4, 1772,” states that the “Third Check” had just “made its appearance.” The fourth was published before the year was ended, and bore the title of “Logica Genevensis; or, a Fourth Check to Antinomianism, in which St. James’s Pure Religion is defended against the Charges, and established upon the Concessions of Mr. Richard and Mr. Rowland Hill. In a Series of Letters to those Gentlemen, by the Vindicator of the Minutes. Bristol: Printed by William Pine, 1772.” 12mo. 245 pp. The letters are thirteen in number, and all of them are addressed to Mr. Richard Hill, except the ninth, which is addressed “to Mr. Rowland Hill,” and the tenth and eleventh written to the two brothers conjointly. The thirteenth, and last, is dated, “Madeley, Nov. 15, 1772.”[270]
Footnote 270:
The semi-infidel Monthly Review, which could hardly exist without sneering at evangelical religion, remarked concerning this Fourth Check to Antinomianism:—
“Mr. Fletcher continues to push the Calvinists with unremitting vigour. He here encounters two formidable adversaries at once. The veteran Wesley, who now, perhaps, thinks it time to retire from the well-fought field, is fortunate in having so zealous an auxiliary.” (Monthly Review, 1773, p. 240.)
Meanwhile, Wesley published “Some Remarks on Mr. Hill’s Review of all the Doctrines taught by Mr. John Wesley.” This is not the place to analyse Wesley’s 12mo. pamphlet of 54 pages, but the following extract from it may be acceptable:—
“With regard to Mr. Hill’s objections to Mr. Fletcher, I refer all candid men to his own writings—his letters, entitled a ‘First, Second, and Third Check to Antinomianism;’ the rather, because there are very few of his arguments which Mr. Hill even attempts to answer. ’Tis true he promises ‘a full and particular answer to Mr. Fletcher’s “Second Check to Antinomianism”;’ but it will puzzle any one to find where that answer is except in the title-page. And if anything more is needful to be done, Mr. Fletcher is still able to answer for himself. But if he does, I would recommend to his consideration the advice formerly given by a wise man to his friend, ‘See that you humble not yourself to that man; it would hurt both him and the cause of God.’ ’Tis pity but he had considered it sooner, and he might have escaped some keen reflections. But he did not. He imagined when he spoke or wrote in the simplicity of his heart, that his opponents would have received his words in the same spirit wherein they were spoken; but they turn them all into poison. He not only loses his sweet words, but they are turned into bitterness—are interpreted as mere sneer and sarcasm! A good lesson for me. I had designed to have transcribed Mr. Fletcher’s character of Mr. Hill, and to have added a little thereto, in hope of softening his spirit. But I see it is in vain; as well might one hope to soften
‘Inexorable Pluto, king of shades.’
Since he is capable of putting such a construction even upon Mr. Fletcher’s gentleness and mildness; since he ascribes even to him ‘a pen dipped in gall,’ what will he not ascribe to me? I have done therefore with humbling myself to these men—to Mr. Hill and his associates. I have humbled myself to them for these thirty years, but will do it no more. I have done with attempting to soften their spirits; it is all lost labour” (pp. 3, 4).
Having come to such a determination, it need not be added that Wesley’s pamphlet was one of the most trenchant he ever published.
Wesley was in Shropshire in the month of August, and probably had an interview with Fletcher. It is not unlikely that Fletcher accompanied Wesley in his journey to Bristol; but if this were not the case, it is certain that he soon after followed him. Hence the following hitherto unpublished letter, written by John Pawson, an itinerant preacher of ten years’ standing:—
“BRISTOL, September 29, 1772.
“MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,—Mr. Wesley came here on Saturday, August 29, and has been with us ever since, but intends to leave Bristol next Monday” [October 5]. “He seems to be as zealous and active in his Master’s service as ever, and quite in good health. We have also had the great Mr. Fletcher here, but he is now returned to Madeley. He seems to be an eminent saint indeed. I had the satisfaction to hear him twice. He is a lively, zealous preacher; the power of God seems to attend his word; yet I admire him much more as a writer than as a preacher. Being a foreigner, there is a kind of roughness attends his language that is not grateful to an English hearer; and the English not being his mother-tongue, he sometimes seems to be at a loss for words. Yet he certainly is a great and blessed man.
“We have had very large congregations to hear both Mr. Wesley and Mr. Fletcher, especially the latter; and I hope we shall see the fruit of their preaching in a little time. I trust that our gracious Lord will be with us, and that we shall have a prosperous year; though I apprehend it will be attended with greater difficulties than ever to keep the people together in Bristol. We have the Tabernacle[273] on one hand, and Mr. Janes,[274] who has a meeting in Tucker Street, on the other. Mr. Roquet[271] also is disaffected towards us. He has been in London for some time with his dear friend Mr. Hill. One night he preached in the Foundery, where he gave universal offence by using many Calvinistical phrases, and by telling the whole congregation that he knew there were whores and bawds even in the Bands[272] in Bristol. He said, ‘These eyes have seen it, and this heart has groaned on account of it.’ How he will be when he returns I know not; but these are the accounts we hear from London. Were it not that so many of our people are so exceedingly unstable, we need not fear any of these things; but you well know that many of them have got itching ears, and will run about, say or do what we will.
“Mr. Wesley has just published his answer to Mr. Hill. I suppose it will make the Calvinists exceeding angry; but I think Mr. Fletcher’s ‘Fourth Check,’ which is now in the press, will make them much more so, as he does not spare them at all, but endeavours to show, in the clearest manner, the horrible consequences of their beloved opinions. He is writing something upon Perfection, the former part of which I have seen; and I think he will set that doctrine in so Scriptural a light, as to stop the mouths of gainsayers.”
Footnote 271:
Whitefield had a Tabernacle at Kingswood; and Lady Huntingdon, in 1753, built one in Bristol, which Whitefield opened.
Footnote 272:
Thomas Janes, who from 1767 to 1770 was one of Wesley’s itinerants. His health not being equal to the rough work of a Methodist preacher he settled as the pastor of a dissenting congregation in Bristol. He died in 1773. He was a man of considerable abilities, and compiled and published a volume which he entitled “The Beauties of the Poets.”
Footnote 273:
One of the first masters of Wesley’s Kingswood School, but now an ordained clergyman of the Church of England, and curate of St. Werburgh in Bristol. He was an intimate friend of Lady Huntingdon.
Footnote 274:
The Band-meetings of the Methodists, consisting of persons selected from the Methodist classes.
Fletcher dedicated his “Fourth Check to Antinomianism” “to all candid Calvinists in the Church of England.” An extract from this dedication may be useful, as giving, in a brief form, some of the doctrines which Fletcher had defended and enforced, and which had so hugely offended his Calvinistic friends.
“They” [his opponents] “will try to frighten you from reading this book, by protesting that I throw down the foundation of Christianity and help Mr. Wesley to place works and merit on the Redeemer’s throne. To this dreadful charge I answer:—1. That I had rather my right hand should lose its cunning to all eternity, than use it a moment to detract from the Saviour’s real glory. 2. That the strongest pleas I produce for holiness and good works are quotations from the Homilies of our own Church as well as from the Puritan divines, whom I cite preferably to others, because they held what you are taught to call the doctrines of grace. 3. That what I have said of those doctrines recommends itself to every unprejudiced person’s reason and conscience. 4. That my capital arguments in favour of practical Christianity are founded upon our second justification by the evidence of good works in the great day; a doctrine which my opponent himself cannot help assenting to. 5. That from first to last, when the meritorious cause of our justification is considered, we set works aside; praying God not to enter into judgment with us, or weigh our merits, but to pardon our offences for Christ’s sake; and gladly ascribing the whole of our salvation to His alone merits, as much as Calvin or Dr. Crisp does. 6. That when the word meriting, deserving, or worthy, which our Lord uses again and again, is applied to good works or good men, we mean absolutely nothing but rewardable, or qualified for the reception of a gracious reward. And 7. That even this improper merit or rewardableness of good works is entirely derived from Christ’s proper merit, who works what is good in us; and from the gracious promise of God, who has freely engaged Himself to recompense the fruits of righteousness, which His own free grace enables us to produce.”
In the first eight of his letters, Fletcher quotes copiously from the Liturgy, Articles, and Homilies of the Church of England, and from the writings of Puritan divines. He also minutely examines Mr. Richard Hill’s objections to his doctrines and to his Scriptural expositions. Up to this point there is a comparative absence of his cutting irony; but there is a great amount of powerful and triumphant writing.
In his ninth letter, addressed to Rowland Hill, he naturally enough lays aside the restraint he had put upon himself. Richard Hill was now a man of matured life, forty years of age; his brother Rowland was a young man of only twenty-seven. The former had not been sparing in the use of acrimonious epithets; the latter had been lavish. No wonder that Fletcher spared not his youthful opponent. He wrote:—
“What reason have you to assert, as you do, that I ‘have grossly misrepresented the Scriptures,’ and ‘made universal havoc of every truth of the Gospel’? The first of these charges is heavy, the second dreadful. Let us see by what arguments they are supported. After throwing away a good part of your book in passing a long, Calvinian, juvenile sentence upon my spirit as a writer, you come at last to the point, and attempt to explain some of the Scriptures which you suppose I have ‘misrepresented.’”
Fletcher proceeds to examine what he calls “the arguments” of Rowland Hill; and then concludes, as follows:—
“Having answered your objections to what you justly call ‘the principal cause of the controversy among us,’ I may make one or two observations upon the friendliness of your ‘Friendly Remarks.’
“Candid reader, if thou hast read my Checks without prejudice, and attentively compared them with the Word of God, wouldest thou ever think that the following lines contain an extract from the friendly sentence, which my young opponent passes upon them?—‘Hard names, banter, sarcasm, sneer, abuse, bravado, low arts of slander, slanderous accusation, opprobrious name, ill-natured satire, odious, deformed, detestable colours, unfair and ungenerous treatment, terms void of truth, unmerciful condemnations, false humility, irritating spirit, provoking, uncharitable style, continual sneers, most odious appellations, abusive words, notorious scandalizing, lines too dreadful to be transcribed, unworthy of an answer, beneath contempt, most indecent ridicule, a wretched conclusion, as bitter as gall, and slanders which ought even to make a Turk blush.’
“If thou canst not yet see, gentle reader, into the nature of Mr. Rowland Hill’s ‘Remarks,’ peruse the following friendly sentences. ‘In regard to the fopperies of religion, you certainly differ from the Popish priest of Madeley. You have made universal havoc of every truth of the Gospel. You have invented dreadful slanders. You plentifully stigmatize many with the most unkindly language. You have blackened our principles, and scandalized our practice. You place us in a manner among murderers. It shocks me to follow you. Our characters lie bleeding under the cruelty of your pen, and complain loudly against your great injustice. Blush for the characters you have injured by the rashness and bitterness of your pen. You have invented a set of monsters, and raised a hideous ghost, by your own spells and incantations of banter and contempt. Numberless sneers, taunts, and sarcasms dreadfully decorate the whole of your performance: they are nothing better than infernal terms of darkness, which it is hateful to transcribe.’
“When I cast my eyes upon this extract, I cannot help crying out, ‘If this is my antagonist’s friendliness, alas! what will be his displeasure? And what have I done to deserve these tokens of Calvinian benevolence? Why are these flowers of Geneva rhetoric so plentifully heaped upon my head?’
“Sir, I do not intimate that I have done nothing displeasing to you. Far from insinuating it, I shall present my readers with a list of the manifold, but well-meant provocations, which have procured me your public correspondence. I say, well-meant provocations; for all I want to provoke any one to is love and good works.
“1. I have written my Checks with the confidence with which the clear dictates of reason, and the full testimonies of Scripture, usually inspire those who love what they esteem truth more than they do their dearest friends.
“2. After speaking most honourably of many Calvinists, even of all that are pious, I have taken the liberty to insinuate, that the schemes of finished salvation, and imputed righteousness, will no more save a Calvinist guilty of practical Antinomianism, than the doctrine of general redemption will save an ungodly remonstrant. Thus I have made no difference between the backsliding elect of the Lock,[275] and the apostates of the Foundery, when death overtakes them in their sins, and in their blood.
“3. I have maintained that our Lord did not speak an untruth when He said, In the day of judgment, by thy words shalt thou be justified; and that St. Paul did not propagate heresy when he wrote, Work out your own salvation.
“4. I have sprinkled with the salt of irony your favourite doctrine (‘Friendly Remarks,’ p. 39), ‘Salvation wholly depends upon the purpose of God according to election, without any respect to what may be in them,’ i.e. the elect. Now, Sir, as by the doctrine of undeniable consequences, he who receives a guinea with the king’s head on the one side cannot but receive the lions on the other side; so he that admits the preceding proposition, cannot but admit the inseparable counterpart, namely, the following proposition, which every attentive and unprejudiced person sees written in blood upon that side of Calvin’s standard which is generally kept out of sight, ‘Damnation wholly depends upon the purpose of God according to reprobation, without respect to what may be in the reprobates.’ Here is no ‘inventing a monstrous creed,’ but merely turning the leaf of your own, and reading what is written there, namely, damnation finished, evidently answering to finished salvation.”
Footnote 275:
The Lock Hospital, where Martin Madan was Chaplain.
Fletcher admits that he had used irony in his Checks, not, however, because he liked it, but because he found it needful. He writes:—
“If I make use of irony in my Checks, it is not from ‘spleen,’ but reason. It appears to me that the subject requires it, and that ridiculous error is to be turned out of the temple of truth, not only with scriptural argument, which is the sword of the Spirit, but also with mild irony, which is a proper scourge for a glaring and obstinate mistake.”
Holding such a view, he introduces, in one of the two letters addressed to Richard and Rowland Hill unitedly, an illustration of the absurdities involved in Calvinism, which, perhaps, is as severe as anything that his Checks contain. The extract is long, but must be given unabridged.
“You decry ‘illustrations,’ and I do not wonder at it; for they carry light into Babel, where it is not desired. The father of error begets darkness and confusion. From darkness and confusion springs Calvinism, who, wrapping himself up in some garments he has stolen from the truth, deceives the nations, and gets himself reverenced in a dark temple, as if he were the pure and free Gospel.
“To bring him to a shameful end, we need not stab him with the dagger of ‘calumny,’ or put him upon the rack of persecution. Let him only be dragged out of his obscurity, and brought unmasked to open light. The silent beams of truth will pierce him through! Light alone will torture him to death, as the meridian sun does a bird of night that cannot fly from the gentle operation of its beams.
“May the following illustration dart at least one luminous beam into the profound darkness in which your venerable Diana delights to dwell! And may it show the Christian world that we do not ‘slander you,’ when we assert, you inadvertently destroy God’s law, and cast the Redeemer’s crown to the ground: and that when you say, ‘In point of justification’ (and consequently of condemnation) ‘we have nothing to do with the law: we are under the law as a rule of life,’ but not as a rule of judgment, you might as well say, ‘We are under no law, and consequently no longer accountable for our actions.’
“The King, whom I suppose in love with your doctrines of free grace and free wrath, by the advice of a predestinarian council and parliament, issues out a Gospel proclamation, directed, ‘To all his dear subjects, and elect people, the English.’ By this evangelical manifesto they are informed, ‘That in consideration of the Prince of Wales’s meritorious intercession, and perfect obedience to the laws of England, all the penalties annexed to the breaking of those laws are now abolished with respect to Englishmen: That His Majesty freely pardons all his subjects, who have been, are, or shall be guilty of adultery, murder, or treason: That all their crimes, “past, present, and to come, are for ever and for ever cancelled:”’ That, nevertheless, his loving subjects, who remain strangers to their privileges, shall still be served with sham warrants according to law, and frightened out of their wits, till they have learned to plead they are Englishmen (i.e. elect): And then they shall set at defiance all legalists, that is, all those who shall dare to deal with them according to law: And that, excepting the case of the above-mentioned false prosecution of his chosen people, none of them shall ever be molested for the breach of any law.’
“By the same supreme authority, it is likewise enacted, that all the laws shall continue in force against foreigners, (i.e. reprobates) whom the King and the Prince hate with everlasting hatred, and to whom they have agreed never to show mercy: That, accordingly, they shall be prosecuted to the utmost rigour of every statute, till they are all hanged or burned out of the way: And that, supposing no personal offence can be proved against them, it shall be lawful to hang them in chains for the crime of one of their forefathers, to set forth the King’s wonderful justice, display his glorious sovereignty, and make his chosen people relish the better their sweet, distinguishing privileges as Englishmen.
“Moreover, His Majesty, who loves order and harmony, charges his loving subjects to consider still the statutes of England, which are in force against foreigners, as very good rules of life for the English, which they will do well to follow, but BETTER to break; because every breach of those rules will work for their good, and make them sing louder the faithfulness of the King, the goodness of the Prince, and the sweetness of this Gospel proclamation.
“Again, as nothing is so displeasing to the King as legality, which he hates even more than extortion and whoredom; lest any of his dear people, who have acted the part of a strumpet, robber, murderer, or traitor, should, through the remains of their inbred corruption, and ridiculous legality, mourn too deeply for breaking some of their rules of life, our gracious Monarch solemnly assures them, that, though he highly disapproves of adultery and murder, yet these breaches of rules are not worse, in his sight, than a wandering thought in speaking to him, or a moment’s dulness in his service: That robbers, therefore, and traitors, adulterers and murderers, who are free-born Englishmen, need not be at all uneasy about losing his royal favour; this being utterly impossible, because they always stand complete in the honesty, loyalty, chastity, and charity of the Prince.
“Moreover, because the King changes not, whatever lengths the English go in immorality, he will always look upon them as his pleasant children, his dear people, and men after his own heart; and that, on the other hand, whatsoever lengths foreigners go in pious morality, his gracious Majesty is determined still to consider them as hypocrites, vessels of wrath, and cursed children, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever; because he always views them completely guilty, and absolutely condemned in a certain robe of unrighteousness, woven thousands of years ago by one of their ancestors. This dreadful sanbenito[276] His Majesty has thought fit to put upon them by imputation; and in it, it is his good pleasure that they should hang in adamantine chains, or burn in fire unquenchable.
“Finally, as foreigners are dangerous people, and may stir up His Majesty’s subjects to rebellion, the English are informed that if any one of them, were he to come over from Geneva itself, shall dare to insinuate that this most gracious gospel proclamation is not according to equity, morality, and godliness, the first Englishman that meets him shall have full leave to brand him as a papist, without judge or jury, in the forehead or on the back, as he thinks best; and that, till he is farther proceeded with according to the utmost severity of the law, the chosen nation shall be informed, in the Gospel Magazine, to beware of him as a man who ‘scatters firebrands, arrows, and deaths,’ and makes universal havoc of every article of this sweet gospel proclamation.
“Given at Geneva, and signed by four of His Majesty’s principal secretaries of state for the predestination department.
“JOHN CALVIN. THE AUTHOR OF ‘P. O.’[277] DR. CRISP. ROWLAND HILL.”
Footnote 276:
A frock, painted with flames and devils, in which heretics were burnt by the Inquisition.
Footnote 277:
Richard Hill, the author of Pietas Oxoniensis.
To those not acquainted with the Calvinian controversy, this “illustration” may appear ungenerous and unfair; but in reality, the doctrines it burlesques had all been asserted by Calvinists, and the theological points involved in them had all been exposed and controverted by Fletcher, in his “Checks to Antinomianism.” No doubt the exposure was unpleasant, but the author of the Checks was not to be blamed for this. His work was done with an aching heart in the defence of truth and righteousness.
Fletcher’s twelfth Letter, addressed to Richard Hill alone, dwells altogether on the doctrine of Imputed Righteousness, which Fletcher describes as follows:—
“Consistent Calvinists believe that if a man is elected, God absolutely imputes to him Christ’s personal righteousness, i.e., the perfect obedience unto death which Christ performed upon earth. This is reckoned to him for obedience and righteousness, even while he is actually disobedient, and before he has a grain of inherent righteousness. They consider this imputation, as an unconditional and eternal act of grace, by which, not only a sinner’s past sins, but his crimes present and to come, be they more or be they less, be they small or be they great, are for ever and for ever covered. He is eternally justified from all things. And, therefore, under this imputation, he is perfectly righteous before God, even while he commits adultery or murder. Or, to use your own expression, whatever lengths he runs, whatever depths he falls into, ‘he always stands absolved, always complete in the everlasting righteousness of the Redeemer.’”
This, to many Calvinists of the present day, will seem to be an extravagant caricature of one of their favourite dogmas, but it must not be overlooked that a great part of Fletcher’s descriptive definition is actually taken from the published writings of Richard Hill. No wonder, therefore, that Fletcher, with stinging irony, proceeds to say:—
“In point of justification, it matters not how unrighteous a believer actually is in himself; because the robe of Christ’s personal righteousness, which, at his peril, he must not attempt to patch up with any personal righteousness of his own, is more than sufficient to adorn him from head to foot; and he must be sure to appear before God in no other. In this rich garment of finished salvation, the greatest apostates shine brighter than angels, though they are ‘in themselves black’ as the old murderer, and filthy as the brute that wallows in the mire. This ‘best robe,’ as it is called, is full-trimmed with such phylacteries as these,—‘Once in grace, always in grace;’ ‘Once justified, eternally justified;’ ‘Once washed, always fair, undefiled, and without spot.’ And so great are the privileges of those who have it on, that they can range through all the bogs of sin, wade through all the puddles of iniquity, and roll themselves in the thickest mire of wickedness, without contracting the least spot of guilt, or speck of defilement.”
Of course, Fletcher found no difficulty in demolishing such luscious and pernicious nonsense as this.
“If this doctrine is true,” says he, “the Divine perfections suffer a general eclipse; one half of the Bible is erased; St. James’s Epistle is made void; defiled religion justly passes for ‘pure gospel;’ the Calvinian doctrine of perseverance is true; and barefaced Antinomianism is properly recommended as ‘the doctrines of grace.’”
Fletcher’s last letter, also addressed to “Richard Hill, Esq.” alone, deals with the doctrine of Free-will. His definition of the Methodist doctrine deserves quotation.
“We never supposed that the natural will of fallen man is free to good, before it is more or less touched and rectified by grace. All we assert is, that, whether a man chooses good or evil, his will is free, or it does not deserve the name of will. It is as far from us to think that man, unassisted by Divine grace, is sufficient to will spiritual good; as to suppose that when he wills it by grace he does not will it freely. And, therefore, agreeably to our Tenth Article, which you quote against us without the least reason, we steadily assert that we have no power to do good works, without the grace of God preventing us, not that we may have a free will, for this we always had in the above-mentioned sense, but that we may have a good will; believing that, as confirmed saints and angels have a free will, though they have no evil will, so abandoned reprobates and devils have a free will, though they have no good will.”
These may appear to the cursory reader metaphysical niceties of no practical importance; but, a hundred years ago, they were considered doctrines of vital interest. The difference between Fletcher and his Calvinian friends is well stated by himself:—
“From our mutual concessions, it is evident we agree, 1. That the will is always free; 2. That the will of man, considered as fallen in Adam, and unassisted by the grace of God, is only free to evil; and, 3. That when he is free to good, free to choose life, he has this from redeeming grace.
“But, although we agree in those material points, the difference between us is still very considerable; for, we assert, that through the Mediator promised to all mankind in Adam, God, by His free grace, restores to ALL mankind a talent of free will to good, by which they are put in a capacity of choosing life or death, that is, of acquitting themselves well or ill, at their option, in their present state of trial.
“This you utterly deny, maintaining that man is not in a state of probation; and that as Christ died for none but the elect, none but they can ever have any degree of saving grace, that is, any free will to good. Hence, you conclude that all the elect are in a state of finished salvation; and necessarily, infallibly, and irresistibly choose life; while all the reprobates are shut up in a state of finished damnation; and necessarily, infallibly, and irresistibly choose death.
“We are obliged to oppose this doctrine, because it appears to us a doctrine of wrath, rather than a doctrine of grace. If we are not mistaken, it is opposite to the general tenor of the Scriptures, injurious to all the Divine perfections, and subversive of this fundamental truth of natural and revealed religion, God shall judge the world in righteousness. It is calculated to strengthen the carnal security of Laodicean professors, raise horrid anxieties in the minds of doubting Christians, and give damned spirits just ground to blaspheme to all eternity. Again, it withdraws from thinking sinners and judicious saints the helps which God has given them, by multitudes of conditional promises and threatenings, designed to work upon their hopes and fears. And, while it unnecessarily stumbles men of sense and hardens infidels, it affords wicked men rational excuses to continue in their sins, and gives desperate offenders full room to charge not only Adam, but God Himself, with all their enormities.”
In this piteous way did the evangelical revivalists of the last century become divided. It was a mournful scene; but, in the long run, it was over-ruled for good. Error was crushed, and truth rose triumphant. Meanwhile, on one side at least, great bitterness was engendered, and lamentable epithets were used. In the hottest of the fray, however, Fletcher, the chief combatant, never lost his temper. Hence, in concluding his “Fourth Check to Antinomianism,” he wrote:—
“Although we severely expose the mistakes of godly Calvinists, we sincerely love their persons, truly reverence their piety, and cordially rejoice in the success which attends their evangelical labours. And, although we cannot admit their logic, while they defend a bad cause with bad arguments, we should do them great injustice if we did not acknowledge that there have been, and are still among them, men eminent for good sense and good learning—men as remarkable for their skill in the art of logic, as for their deep acquaintance with the oracles of God. We thank them for their pious labours; we ask the continuance, or the renewal, of their valuable love. We invite them to our pulpits; and assure them that, if they admit us into theirs, we shall do by them as we would be done by,—avoiding to touch there, or among their own people occasionally committed to our charge, upon the points of doctrine debated between us; and reserving to ourselves the liberty of bearing our full testimony in our own pulpits, and from the press, against Antinomianism and Pharisaism in all their shapes.”
There were other combatants in the field whose power over themselves was not so great and so praiseworthy. Walter Sellon was one of them, to whom Richard Hill addressed the following, hitherto unpublished, letter, just about the time when the Fourth Check of Fletcher first appeared:—
“HAWKSTONE, December 24, 1772.
“DEAR SIR,—It will answer no end for you and me to continue our disputes, except that of stirring up the old man in us both. I believe you have the grace of God, and I am sure you are blest with a good understanding, which is well cultivated by acquired knowledge. With these endowments and qualifications, I trust it will please God to make you abundantly useful in the cause of Christ. I heartily forgive whatever has savoured more of Walter Sellon than of Jesus Christ in your two letters to me; and I beg the same on behalf of poor Richard Hill. Come, my dear Sir, let us pray for each other. If ever I have the pleasure of seeing you in the flesh, be assured that I shall embrace you in the bonds of brotherly love; if not, I trust we shall one day meet in a better place, where there will be no other contention between us than who shall sing loudest, ‘Grace, grace unto it!’ Without undervaluing myself in any respect, this will certainly be the privilege of that amazing monument of mercy who desires always to subscribe himself,
“Very dear Sir, your sincere and affectionate friend, in the best of bonds,
RICHARD HILL.”
“To the Rev. Mr. Sellon, Ledsham, near Ferry Bridge, Yorkshire.”
This polemical chapter cannot be more fitly concluded than with these breathings of Christian love, to which may be added an extract from a letter which Fletcher wrote to Mr. Charles Perronet, who was suffering great affliction of body and mind:—
“1772, September 7.—MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,—No cross, no crown; the heavier the cross, the brighter the crown.
“‘O for a firm and lasting faith, To credit all the Almighty saith!’
“Faith, I mean the evidence of things not seen, is a powerful cordial to support and exhilarate us under the heaviest pressures of pain and temptation. By faith, we live upon the invisible, eternal God; we believe that in Him we live, move, and have our being; insensibly we slide from self into God, from the visible into the invisible, from the carnal into the spiritual, from time into eternity. Here our spirits are ever young; they live in and upon the very fountain of strength, sprightliness, and joy. Oh! my dear friend, let us rest more upon the truth as it is in Jesus. Of late, I have been brought to feed more upon Jesus as the truth. I see more in Him in that character than I ever did. I see Christ the truth of my life, friends, relations, sense, food, raiment, light, fire, resting-place. All out of Him are but shadows. All in Him are blessed sacraments; I mean visible signs of the fountain, or vehicles to convey the streams of inward grace.”[278]
Footnote 278:
Benson’s “Life of Fletcher.”
XII. “APPEAL TO MATTER OF FACT AND COMMON SENSE.”
1772.
THE present chapter is a somewhat inconvenient break in the history of the Calvinian controversy; but in maintaining chronological order, the inconvenience cannot be avoided.
Fletcher’s “Fourth Check to Antinomianism” was finished on November 15, 1772, and was published before the year was terminated. On a fly-leaf at the end of the first edition the following advertisement was printed:—
“In a few days will be published, price two shillings, by the same author, ‘An Appeal to Matter of Fact and Common Sense; Or, A Rational Demonstration of Man’s corrupt and lost Estate.’”
In some respects, this is Fletcher’s ablest publication, and certainly it has been his most popular. A “second edition, revised and enlarged,” was printed a few months after the first, and, since then, it has been scores of times re-issued. As early as the year 1804, Joseph Benson, Fletcher’s biographer, remarked concerning it, “I hardly know a treatise that has been so universally read, or made so eminently useful.” Even the Monthly Review had nought to say against it. In the number for March, 1773, the editor’s notice of it was the following:—
“Although we cannot subscribe to all Mr. Fletcher’s religious opinions, we think there are abundance of good things in his writings; and we have no doubt that he is warmly animated by a sincere and pious regard for the salvation of the souls that are committed to his charge, as well as for the spiritual welfare of mankind in general.”
It is worthy of remark that besides being vended at Wesley’s Foundery in London, the first edition was also “sold at the workhouse in Madeley Wood, Shropshire, for the benefit of the poor.” When the second edition was published, the workhouse, for some unknown reason, was not advertised. Probably parochial officials had interdicted the sale.
Fletcher seems to have spent more time upon his “Appeal to Matter of Fact and Common Sense” than he did upon any of his “Checks to Antinomianism.” Joseph Benson saw it in manuscript, and read most of it, a year before its publication. Fletcher took it to Bristol and left it there; but, before it was committed to the press, he requested that it might be returned to him at Madeley, to be further revised and improved. For many weeks, the manuscript was unheard of, “but,” says Benson, “he was quite easy under the apprehended loss, which certainly would not have been a small one, as any person will judge who considers how much thought and time such a work must have cost him. It was found, however, by-and-by, had the finishing hand put to it, and was published to the conviction and edification of thousands.”[279]
Footnote 279:
Benson’s “Life of Fletcher.”
Fletcher’s dedication of his book, highly characteristic, and embodying biographical facts, deserves attention.
“To the principal inhabitants of the parish of Madeley, in the county of Salop.
“GENTLEMEN,—You are no less entitled to my private labours than the inferior class of my parishioners. As you do not choose to partake with them of my evening instructions, I take the liberty to present you with some of my morning meditations. May these well-meant endeavours of my pen be more acceptable to you than those of my tongue! And may you carefully read in your closets what you have perhaps inattentively heard in the church! I appeal to the Searcher of hearts that I had rather impart truths than receive tithes. You kindly bestow the latter upon me; grant me, I pray, the satisfaction of seeing you favourably receive the former, from, gentlemen, your affectionate minister and obedient servant,
“Madeley, 1772.
“J. FLETCHER.”
Fletcher’s principal tithe payers would not attend his evening services, and yet he was more anxious to teach them “the truth as it is in Jesus,” than to receive their pelf. He loved their souls, though they were too high and mighty—that is, too worldly and ignorant—to appreciate his ministry.
Fletcher rightly regarded the doctrine which he irrefutably establishes as of the highest importance. By large numbers of men, who considered themselves good Christians, it was treated with indifference, and in many instances it was flatly denied. With the exception of his “Notes on the Old and New Testaments,” the largest as well as the ablest book Wesley ever wrote was on the same subject. His “Doctrine of Original Sin according to Scripture, Reason, and Experience,” was first published in 1757; and now, fifteen years later, his friend Fletcher, doubtless with his approval, used his great talents to the utmost in defending the same dogma. In both books, to some extent, the same line of argumentation is followed; but, of course, Fletcher’s style is very different from that of Wesley. Both of them insisted that the doctrine is essential to the Christian religion, and that if it is not true, the Christian religion is not needed. In his preface Wesley wrote:—
“If we take away this foundation, that man is by nature foolish and sinful, ‘fallen short of the glorious image of God,’ the Christian system falls at once; nor will it deserve so honourable an appellation as that of a ‘cunningly devised fable.’”
Fletcher began his book with the same assertion. His first paragraph is as follows:—
“In every religion, there is a principal truth or error, which, like the first link of a chain, necessarily draws after it all the parts with which it is essentially connected. This leading principle in Christianity, distinguished from Deism, is the doctrine of our corrupt and lost estate; for if man is not at variance with his Creator, what need of a Mediator between God and him? If he is not a depraved, undone creature, what necessity of so wonderful a Restorer and Saviour as the Son of God? If he is not enslaved to sin, why is he redeemed by Jesus Christ? If he is not polluted, why must he be washed in the blood of that immaculate Lamb? If his soul is not disordered, what occasion is there for such a divine Physician? If he is not helpless and miserable, why is he perpetually invited to secure the assistance and consolations of the Holy Spirit? And, in a word, if he is not born in sin, why is a new birth so absolutely necessary, that Christ declares, with the most solemn asseverations, without it no man can see the kingdom of God?
“This doctrine then being of such importance that genuine Christianity stands or falls with it, it may be proper to state it at large; and as this cannot be done in stronger and plainer words than those of the sacred writers and our pious Reformers, I beg leave to collect them and present the reader with a picture of our natural estate, drawn at full length by those ancient and masterly hands.”
Fletcher proceeds to do this, and with irrefutable arguments establishes his doctrine; but in this part of his work there is no need to follow him. Indeed, his summary of Scripture proofs and his quotations from the Articles, Homilies, and Liturgy of the Church of England, do not fill more than about a dozen pages. His “second part” he begins as follows:—
“As no man is bound to believe what is contrary to common sense, if the above-stated doctrine appears irrational, Scriptures, Articles, Homilies, and Liturgy are quoted in vain. When men of parts are pressed with their authority, they start from it as an imposition on their reason, and make as honourable a retreat as they possibly can.
“Some, to extricate themselves at once, set the Bible aside as full of incredible assertions. Others, with more modesty, plead that the Scriptures have been frequently misunderstood, and are so in the present case. They put grammar, criticism, and common sense to the rack, to show that when the inspired writers say the human heart is desperately wicked, they mean that it is extremely good; or at least like blank paper, ready to receive either the characters of virtue or of vice. With respect to the testimony of our Reformers, they would have you to understand that in this enlightened age we must leave their harsh, uncharitable sentiments to the old Puritans and the present Methodists.
“That such objectors may subscribe as a solemn truth what they have hitherto rejected as a dangerous error, and that humbled sinners may see the propriety of a heart-felt repentance, and the absolute need of an Almighty Redeemer, they are here presented with some proofs of our depravity, taken from the astonishing severity of God’s dispensations towards mankind.”
Limited space renders it impossible to give an outline of Fletcher’s thirty-six arguments, all founded upon the following axiom:—
“If we consider the Supreme Being as creating a world for the manifestation of His glory, the display of His perfections, and the communication of His happiness to an intelligent creature, whom He would attach to Himself by the strongest ties of gratitude and love, we at once perceive that He never could form this earth and man in their present disordered, deplorable condition.”
An extract from the ninth argument will not be out of place, furnishing, as it does, a doleful picture of a large number of Fletcher’s parishioners—the colliers, the bargemen, and the iron-workers.
“To go no farther than this populous parish; with what hardships and dangers do our indigent neighbours earn their bread! See those who ransack the bowels of the earth to get the black mineral we burn; how little is their lot preferable to the Spanish felons who work the golden mines?
“They take their leave of the light of the sun, and, suspended by a rope, are let down many fathoms perpendicularly towards the centre of the globe; they traverse the rocks through which they have dug their horizontal ways. The murderer’s cell is a palace in comparison of the black spot to which they repair; the vagrant’s posture in the stocks is preferable to that in which they labour.
“Form, if you can, an idea of the misery of men kneeling, stooping, or lying on one side, to toil all day in a confined place, where a child could hardly stand; whilst a younger company, with their hands and feet on the black dusty ground, and a chain about their body, creep, and drag along, like four-footed beasts, heavy loads of the dirty mineral, through ways almost impassable to the curious observer.
“In these low and dreary vaults, all the elements seem combined against them. Destructive damps, and clouds of noxious dust, infect the air they breathe. Sometimes water incessantly distils on their naked bodies; or, bursting upon them in streams, drowns them, and deluges their work. At other times, pieces of detached rocks crush them to death; or the earth, breaking in upon them, buries them alive. And frequently sulphureous vapours, kindled in an instant by the light of their candles, form subterraneous thunder and lightning. What a dreadful phenomenon! How impetuous is the blast! How fierce the rolling flames! How intolerable the noisome smell! How dreadful the continued roar! How violent and fatal the explosion!
“Wonderful providence! Some of the unhappy men have time to prostrate themselves; the fiery scourge grazes their backs; the ground shields their breasts; they escape. See them wound up out of the blazing dungeon, and say if these are not brands plucked out of the fire. A pestiferous steam and clouds of suffocating smoke pursue them. Half dead themselves, they hold their dead or dying companions in their trembling arms. Merciful God of Shadrach! Kind Protector of Meshach! Mighty Deliverer of Abednego! Patient Preserver of rebellious Jonah! Will not these utter a song—a song of praise to Thee? praise ardent as the flames they escape—lasting as the life Thou prolongest? Alas, they refuse! And some—O tell it not among the heathens, lest they for ever abhor the name of Christian—some return to the very pits where they have been branded with sulphureous fire by the warning hand of Providence, and there, sporting themselves again with the most infernal wishes, call aloud for a fire that cannot be quenched, and challenge the Almighty to cast them into hell, that bottomless pit whence there is no return.
“Leave these black men at their perilous work, and see yonder barge-men haling that loaded vessel against wind and stream. Since the dawn of day, they have wrestled with the impetuous current; and now that it almost overpowers them, how do they exert all their remaining strength, and strain their every nerve? How are they bathed in sweat and rain? Fastened to their lines as horses to their traces, wherein do they differ from the laborious brutes? Not in an erect posture of the body, for, in the intenseness of their toil, they bend forward, their head is foremost, and their hands upon the ground. If there is any difference, it consists in this: horses are indulged with a collar to save their breasts; and these, as if theirs were not worth saving, draw without one; the beasts tug in patient silence and mutual harmony; but the men with loud contention and horrible imprecations. O sin, what hast thou done? Is it not enough that these drudges should toil like brutes? must they also curse one another like devils?
“If you have gone beyond the hearing of their impious oaths, stop to consider the sons of Vulcan confined to these forges and furnaces. Is their lot much preferable? A sultry air and clouds of smoke and dust are the elements in which they labour. The confused noise of water falling, steam hissing, fire-engines working, wheels turning, files creaking, hammers beating, ore bursting, and bellows roaring, form the dismal concert that strikes the ears; while a continual eruption of flames, ascending from the mouth of their artificial volcanoes, dazzle their eyes with a horrible glare. Massy bars of hot iron are the heavy tools they handle, cylinders of the first magnitude the enormous weights they heave, vessels full of melted metal the dangerous loads they carry, streams of the same burning fluid the fiery rivers which they conduct into the deep cavities of their subterraneous moulds, and millions of flying sparks with a thousand drops of liquid, hissing iron, the horrible showers to which they are exposed. See them cast: you would think them in a bath and not in a furnace; they bedew the burning sand with their streaming sweat; nor are their wet garments dried up, either by the fierce fires they attend, or the fiery streams which they manage. Certainly, of all men, these have best reason to remember the just sentence of an offended God: ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread all the days of thy life.’”
This long extract is given, not as a specimen of Fletcher’s style of writing, for it is hardly that, but as a truthful description of a large number of the poor creatures of whom he had the pastoral oversight. Many a passage of the highest kind of eloquence might be cited; but the reader is recommended to buy and peruse the book himself. The following is presented, solely because it refers to growing evils, alarmingly prevalent among people who think themselves religious:—
“But all are not employed in sin and wickedness, for many go through a constant round of innocent diversions; and these, at least, must be innocent and happy. Let us then consider the amusements of mankind, and see how far our own pleasures demonstrate our innocence and happiness.
“How excessively foolish are the plays of children! How full of mischief and cruelty the sports of boys! How vain, foppish, and frothy the joys of young people! And how much below the dignity of upright, pure creatures, the snares that persons of different sexes lay for each other! When they are together, is not this their favourite amusement, till they are deservedly caught in the net which they imprudently spread? But see them asunder.
“Here a circle of idle women, supping a decoction of Indian herbs, talk or laugh all together, like so many chirping birds, or chattering monkeys, and, scandal excepted, every way to as good a purpose. And there, a club of graver men blow, by the hour, clouds of stinking smoke out of their mouths, or wash it down their throats with repeated draughts of intoxicating liquors. The strong fumes have already reached their heads, and, while some stagger home, others triumphantly keep the field of excess; though one is already stamped with the heaviness of the ox, another worked up to the fierceness and roar of the lion, and a third brought down to the filthiness of the vomiting dog.
“Leave them at their manly sport, to follow those musical sounds, mixed with a noise of stamping, and you will find others profusely perspiring, and violently fatiguing themselves, in skipping up and down a room for a whole night, and ridiculously turning their backs and faces to each other a hundred different ways. Would not a man of sense prefer running ten miles upon an useful errand, to this useless manner of losing his rest, heating his blood, exhausting his spirits, unfitting himself for the duties of the following day, and laying the foundation of a putrid fever or a consumption, by breathing the midnight air corrupted by clouds of dust, by the unwholesome fumes of candles, and by the more pernicious steam that issues from the bodies of many persons, who use the strong exercise in a confined place.
“In the next room they are more quiet, but are they more rationally employed? Why do they so earnestly rattle those ivory cubes; and so anxiously study those packs of loose and spotted leaves? Is happiness graven upon the one, or stamped upon the other? Answer, ye gamesters, who curse your stars, as ye go home with an empty purse and a heart full of rage.
“‘We hope there is no harm in taking an innocent game at cards,’ reply a ridiculous party of superannuated ladies; ‘gain is not our aim; we only play to kill time.’ You are not then so well employed as the foolish heathen emperor, who amused himself in killing troublesome flies and wearisome time together. The delight of rational creatures, much more of Christians on the brink of the grave, is to redeem, improve, and solidly enjoy time; but yours, alas! consists in the bare irreparable loss of that invaluable treasure. Oh! what account will you give of the souls you neglect, and the talents you bury?
“And are public diversions better evidence of our innocence and happiness?”
Fletcher then proceeds to descant, in the same style, on theatrical performances, annual wakes, horse-racing, cock-fighting, man-fighting, and dog-fighting; and then concludes his “Twenty-third Argument,” as follows:—
“These are thy favourite amusements, O England, thou centre of the civilized world, where reformed Christianity, deep-thinking wisdom, and polite learning, with all its refinements, have fixed their abode! But, in the name of common sense, how can we clear them from the imputation of absurdity, folly, and madness? And by what means can they be reconciled, I will not say to the religion of the meek Jesus, but to the philosophy of a Plato, or the calm reason of any thinking man? How perverted must be the taste, how irrational and cruel the diversions of barbarians, in other parts of the globe! And how applicable to all the wise man’s observation: ‘Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, and madness in the breasts of the sons of men!’”
Further extensive extracts from Fletcher’s invaluable book need not be given here. What he calls his “Short Defence of the Oracles of God” cannot be perused by any candid reader without the conviction being produced that infidelity, in all its phases, is the most unreasonable theory in existence. From his thirty-six arguments,—unanswerable arguments,—he deduces ten inferences, namely:—
“1. If we are by nature in a corrupt and lost estate, the grand business of ministers is to warn us of our imminent danger. 2. If we are naturally depraved and condemned creatures, self-righteousness and pride are the most absurd and monstrous of all our sins. 3. If the corruption of mankind is universal and inveterate, no mere creature can deliver them from it. 4. If our guilt is immense, it cannot be expiated without a sacrifice of an infinite dignity. 5. If our spiritual maladies are both numerous and mortal, we cannot recover the spiritual health that we enjoyed in our first parents, but by the powerful help of our heavenly Physician, the second Adam. 6. If our nature is so completely fallen and totally helpless, that, in spiritual things, ‘we are not sufficient of ourselves to think any thing’ truly good ‘as of ourselves,’ it is plain we stand in absolute need of the Spirit’s assistance to enable us to pray, repent, believe, love, and obey aright. 7. If we are really and truly born in sin, our regeneration cannot be a mere metaphor, or a vain ceremony, but real and positive. 8. If the fall of mankind in Adam does not consist in a capricious imputation of his personal guilt, but in a real, present participation of his depravity, impotence, and misery, the salvation that believers have in Christ is not a capricious imputation of His personal righteousness, but a real, present participation of His purity, power, and blessedness, together with pardon and acceptance. 9. If the corrupt nature, which sinners derive from Adam, spontaneously produces all the wickedness that overspreads the earth, the holy nature which believers receive from Christ is spontaneously productive of all the fruits of righteousness described in the oracles of God. 10. If corruption and sin work so powerfully and sensibly in the hearts of the unregenerate, we may, without deserving the name of enthusiasts, affirm that the regenerate are sensible of the powerful effects of Divine grace in their souls; or, to use the words of our Seventeenth Article, we may say, ‘They feel in themselves the workings of the Spirit of Christ.’”
When it is added that the doctrines, from which these inferences are drawn, are plainly stated, and fully proved, a good general idea of Fletcher’s book will be given. His “Concluding Address to the Serious Reader, who inquires, What must I do to be saved?” has been read by myriads, and cannot be read too much. The last two paragraphs of his treatise must be quoted:—
“This book is chiefly recommended to disbelieving moralists, who deride the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in the day of conversion, merely because they are not properly acquainted with our fallen and lost estate. And the Checks are chiefly designed for disbelieving Antinomians, who rise against the doctrine of a believer’s salvation by grace through the works of faith in the great day, merely because they do not consider the indispensable necessity of evangelical obedience, and the nature of the day of judgment.
“In the Appeal, the careless, self-conceited sinner is awakened and humbled. In the Address, the serious, humbled sinner is raised up and comforted. And in the Checks, the foolish virgin is re-awakened, the Laodicean believer reproved, the prodigal son lashed back to his father’s house, and the upright believer animated to mend his pace in the way of faith working by love, and to perfect holiness in the fear of God.”
Such is Fletcher’s own accurate account of the important works he had hitherto committed to the press.
XIII. WESLEY’S DESIGNATED SUCCESSOR: THE PENITENT THIEF: A DREADFUL PHENOMENON, ETC., ETC.
1773.
TO preserve chronological order, another chapter must be interjected before the history of the Calvinian controversy is resumed.
In the month of January, 1773, Wesley sent to Fletcher the remarkable letter with which the present work commences. He wished Fletcher to relinquish his vicarage, and to put himself into training to become, after Wesley’s death, the “ωροεστως” of the Methodists. Wesley’s health, apparently, was failing. He was full of anxiety. “The body of the preachers,” he wrote, “are not united: nor will any part of them submit to the rest; so that either there must be one to preside over all, or the work will indeed come to an end.” Subsequent events proved Wesley’s fears to be unfounded; but, for the time being, they were real, and disquieted him. He wished to train his successor, and to introduce him to the people. He specified what he considered to be the necessary qualifications of such a man, and regarded Fletcher as the only one of his wide acquaintance as possessing them. “Without conferring, therefore, with flesh and blood,” said he, “come and strengthen the hands, comfort the heart, and share the labour of your affectionate friend and brother, John Wesley.”
Fletcher’s reply to Wesley’s most important proposal was as follows:—
“MADELEY,
.
“REV. AND DEAR SIR,—I hope the Lord, who has so wonderfully stood by you hitherto, will preserve you to see many of your sheep, and me among them, enter into rest. Should Providence call you first, I shall do my best, by the Lord’s assistance, to help your brother to gather the wreck, and keep together those who are not absolutely bent to throw away the Methodist doctrines and discipline, as soon as he that now letteth is removed out of the way. Every help will then be necessary, and I shall not be backward to throw in my mite.
“In the meantime, you sometimes need an assistant to serve tables, and occasionally to fill up a gap. Providence visibly appointed me to that office many years ago. And though it no less evidently called me hither, yet I have not been without doubt, especially for some years past, whether it would not be expedient that I should resume my office as your deacon; not with any view of presiding over the Methodists after you; but to ease you in your old age, and to be in the way of recovering, and, perhaps, doing more good. I have sometimes thought how shameful it was that no clergyman should join you, to keep in the Church the work God has enabled you to carry on therein. And, as the little estate I have in my own country is sufficient for my maintenance, I have thought I would, one day or other, offer you and the Methodists my free service. While my love of retirement made me linger, I was providentially led to do something in Lady Huntingdon’s plan; but, being shut out there, it appears to me I am again called to my first work.
“Nevertheless, I would not leave this place, without a fuller persuasion that the time is quite come. Not that God uses me much here, but I have not yet sufficiently cleared my conscience from the blood of all men. Meantime, I beg the Lord to guide me by His counsel, and make me willing to go anywhere, or nowhere, to be anything, or nothing.
“Help by your prayers, till you can bless by word of mouth, Rev. and dear Sir, your willing, though unprofitable servant in the Gospel,
“J. FLETCHER.”[280]
Footnote 280:
Wesley’s “Life of Fletcher,” p. 66.
Fletcher did not decline Wesley’s proposal; but he deferred coming to a decision until “the time was quite come.” Whether the proposal was afterwards formally renewed, it is difficult to determine; but Dr. Whitehead, who, from 1764 to 1769, had been one of the itinerant preachers, and who was well acquainted with both Wesley and his friend Fletcher, remarks concerning Wesley’s request:—
“This warm and sincere invitation to a situation not only respected but even reverenced by so large a body of people, must have been highly flattering to Mr. Fletcher; especially as it came from a person he most sincerely loved; whose superior abilities, learning, and labours he admired; and to whose success in the ministry he wished to give every assistance in his power. But he well knew the embarrassments Mr. Wesley met with in the government of the preachers, though he alone, under the providence of God, had given existence to their present character, influence, and usefulness. He was also well acquainted with the mutual jealousies the preachers had of each other, and with their jarring interests: and, above all, with the general determination which prevailed among them not to be under the control of any one man after the death of Mr. Wesley. Under these circumstances, he saw nothing before him but darkness, storms, and tempests, with the most threatening dangers, especially if he should live to be alone in the office. He therefore determined not to launch his little bark on so tempestuous an ocean.
“I cannot, however, but lament that he did not accept Mr. Wesley’s invitation, as he would have done much good while he lived, and have prevented many of the evils which have since taken place.”[281]
Footnote 281:
Whitehead’s “Life of Wesley,” vol. ii., p. 356.
The evils which Dr. Whitehead deprecated were the resolutions enacted by the Methodist Conferences, held after Wesley’s decease, respecting the preachers being allowed to administer the sacraments to their Societies, to hold services in Methodist chapels “in church hours,” and other kindred matters. Of all this, Dr. Whitehead, an able and honest man, strongly disapproved, and hence his regret that Fletcher, by declining Wesley’s invitation, had not helped to, at least, postpone such serious changes.
Wesley foresaw the probability, and indeed the certainty, of such changes being made, and he also lamented Fletcher’s decision. Thirteen years afterwards, in commenting upon Fletcher’s letter to himself, he wrote:—
“‘Providence,’ says he, ‘visibly appointed me to that office’ [Wesley’s assistant] ‘many years ago.’ Is it any wonder then that he should now be in doubt whether he did right in confining himself to one spot? The more I reflect upon it, the more I am convinced he had great reason to doubt this. I can never believe it was the will of God that such a burning and shining light should be hid under a bushel. No; instead of being confined to a country village, it ought to have shone in every corner of our land. He was full as much called to sound an alarm through all the nation as Mr. Whitefield himself. Nay, abundantly more so; seeing he was far better qualified for that important work. He had a more striking person, equally good breeding, an equally winning address, together with a richer flow of fancy, a stronger understanding; a far greater treasure of learning, both in languages, philosophy, philology, and divinity; and, above all (which I can speak with fuller assurance, because I had a thorough knowledge both of one and the other), a more deep and constant communion with the Father, and with the Son, Jesus Christ.
“And yet let not any one imagine that I depreciate Mr. Whitefield, or undervalue the grace of God and the extraordinary gifts which his great Master vouchsafed unto him. I believe he was highly favoured of God; yea, that he was one of the most eminent ministers that has appeared in England, or perhaps in the world, during the present century. Yet I must own I have known many fully equal to Mr. Whitefield, both in holy tempers and holiness of conversation; but one equal herein to Mr. Fletcher I have not known; no, not in a life of fourscore years.”[282]
Footnote 282:
Wesley’s “Life of Fletcher,” p. 68.
No wonder that Wesley lamented the course taken by his wished-for successor; but it is rather difficult to say why Wesley should cast upon him loving blame for confining his light “to a country village.” Fletcher’s hands were full of literary works, by means of which he had defended, and continued to defend, the doctrines which it was the object of Wesley’s life to propagate. Besides, in about a year after Wesley made his proposal, Fletcher’s health began to fail, and never after that was his physical vigour such as to enable him to undertake the laborious itinerancy which Wesley contemplated and desired. Upon the whole, it is an open question whether Fletcher did not render greater service to Wesley and the Methodists by continuing his literary defence of their great and glorious doctrines than he would have done if he had accepted Wesley’s invitation to go into training to become his successor.
In other ways, however, besides his writings, he rendered great assistance to his friend. It was just after the time when Wesley wrote his important letter that an incident occurred which is worth relating.
Samuel Bradburn, a soldier’s son, was born at Gibraltar in 1751. At twelve years of age he was brought to England; at nineteen became a Methodist; and at twenty-one began to preach. During his residence at Gibraltar, he was sent to school at a penny a week; but, on the terms being raised to three-halfpence, his mother took him away, finding it inconvenient to be at such an expense for her son’s education. This was all the schooling that he had; but he was taught to read at home, and before he was eight years old had committed the histories of Joseph and Samson to memory. On coming to England, his parents settled at Chester, and he himself was apprenticed to a shoemaker. In the week preceding Easter, in 1773, he set off to Madeley to have an interview with Fletcher, whose “Checks” he had been reading. On approaching the vicarage, he saw a man working in the garden, who, addressing the young shoemaker, said, “You see, my brother, a fulfilment of the curse, ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.’” Bradburn, stating who he was, said he had not been at Madeley before, and wished to be introduced to Mr. Fletcher. “I am John Fletcher,” replied the amateur gardener. Bradburn, for the moment, was embarrassed; but on saying that he had come to consult the vicar of Madeley respecting his being called to engage in the Christian ministry, Fletcher, with his characteristic generosity, led him into his house, and requested him to become his guest. The invitation was gratefully accepted, and during his stay the young shoemaker was treated with paternal kindness. Bradburn, like his host, was an early riser, and every morning was employed in finding the texts of Scripture which Fletcher wished to use in the “Check” he was then writing, and in listening to Fletcher’s exposition of them. When two or three hours had thus been spent, the students went into the garden of the vicarage and had a spell at any kind of work that needed attention. After this followed the plain gruel breakfast and domestic devotion. Then several more hours were employed in the vicar’s study; after which the master and the pupil set out to visit the parishioners. Every night in the week young Bradburn preached in colliers’ cottages, or in the Methodist meeting-house, Fletcher standing by his side, and generally supplementing the sermon with additional remarks, delivered with delicate tenderness, and always concluded by a prayer. To the end of life, Bradburn thankfully acknowledged that he greatly owed his subsequent eminence to this Madeley visit. When he was leaving, the kind-hearted vicar said, “My little David, go! and if you preach forty years, and save only a single soul, don’t think your time and labour have been lost.” Bradburn always spoke of his early friend as “Saint Fletcher;” and often said, that when he looked at the vicar of Madeley he was almost ready to think the Lord Jesus Christ stood before him in the person of His servant; and in hours of depression, when he found it difficult to pray, he was wont to sigh and cry, “God of Mr. Fletcher, bless me!”[283]
Footnote 283:
Miss Bradburn’s MSS., and MS. by Mr. Harrison, of Chester.
The Methodist reader need not be told that Fletcher’s humble pupil rose to great eminence. Unquestionably he was the greatest pulpit orator that Wesley ever had. Dr. Adam Clarke, who knew him well, once said to a young preacher, who wished his opinion concerning Bradburn, “I have never heard his equal; I can furnish you with no adequate idea of his powers as an orator; we have not a man among us that will support anything like a comparison with him. Another Bradburn must be created, and you must hear him for yourself, before you can receive a satisfactory answer to your inquiry.”
In 1817, all the sermons that Bradburn had published, whether separately or in the Methodist Magazine, were collected, and published in a 12 mo. volume of 332 pages; but, as Dr. Abel Stevens well observes, “The eloquence of Bradburn, like that of Whitefield, could not be printed.”
John Fletcher rendered no small service to John Wesley and the Methodists by his brief training of the young shoemaker in 1773.
While writing his “Checks,” Fletcher seems to have been obliged to curtail his correspondence with his friends. At all events, his published letters belonging to this period are few in number. The following were written in 1773. The first was addressed to his friend Mr. Vaughan, the officer of Excise at Atcham, with whom he became acquainted while he had the charge of the sons of Mr. Hill:—
“MADELEY,
.
“MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,—At the beginning of the week I received your kind letter, and your kind present at the end of it. For both I heartily thank you. Nevertheless, I could wish it were your last present, for I find it more blessed to give than to receive; and in point of the good things of this life my body does not want much, and I can do with what is more common, and cheaper, than the rarities you ply me with.
“Your bounty upon bounty reminds me of the repeated mercies of our God. They follow one another as wave does wave at sea; and all to waft us to the pleasing shore of confidence and gratitude, where we can not only cast anchor near, but calmly stand on the Rock of Ages, and defy the rage of tempests. But you complain, you are not there; billows of temptation drive you from the haven where you would be, and you cry out still, ‘Oh wretched man! who shall deliver me?’
“Here I would ask, Are you willing, really willing, to be delivered? Is your sin, is the prevalence of temptation, a burden too heavy for you to bear? If it is, if your complaint is not a kind of religious compliment, be of good cheer—only believe. Look up! for your redemption draweth near. He is near that delivers, that justifies, that sanctifies you. Cast your soul upon Him. An act of faith will help you to a lift; but one act of faith will not do. Faith must be our life; I mean in conjunction with its grand object. You cannot live by one breath; you must breathe on, and draw the electric, vital fire into your lungs together with the air. So you must believe, and draw the Divine power, the fire of Jesu’s love, together with the truth of the Gospel, which is the blessed element in which believers live.
“My kind Christian love to Mrs. Vaughan. Tell her I am filled with joy in thinking that, though we no more serve the same earthly master,[284] yet we still serve the same heavenly one; who will, ere long, admit us to sit with Abraham himself, if we hold fast our confidence to the end.
“Beware of the world. If you have losses, be not cast down, nor root in the earth with more might and main to repair them. If prosperity smiles upon you, you are in double danger. Think, my friend, that earthly prosperity is like a coloured cloud, which passes away and is soon lost in the shades of night and death. Beware of hurry. Martha, Martha, one thing is needful! Choose it, stand to your choice, and the good part shall not be taken from you by sickness or death. God bless you and yours with all that makes for His glory and your peace.
“I am, my dear friend, yours, etc., “J. FLETCHER.”[285]
Footnote 284:
From this, it would appear that Mrs. Vaughan, previous to her marriage, had been in the employ of Mr. Hill, of Tern Hall.
Footnote 285:
Letters, 1791, p. 216.
The following extracts are taken from a letter addressed to James Ireland, Esq., of Brislington, who had suggested to Fletcher the expediency of publishing in the French language his “Appeal to Matter of Fact and Common Sense.”
“MADELEY, September 21, 1773.
“MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,—I have considered what you say about the translation of my ‘Appeal;’ and I think I might do it some day; nay, I tried to turn a paragraph or two the day after I received your letter, but found it would be a difficult, if not an impossible work for me. I am sure I could not do it abroad. On a journey, I am just like a cask of wine—I am good for nothing till I have some time to settle.
“What you say about Mr. Wesley adds weight to your kind arguments. My spiritual circumstances are what I must look at. I tremble lest outward things should hurt me. The multiplicity of objects and avocations, which attend travelling, is not suited to my case. I think, all things considered, I should sin against my conscience in going, unless I had a call from necessity, or from clearer providences.
“My last ‘Check’ will be as much in behalf of free grace as of holiness; so I hope, upon that plan, all the candid and moderate will be able to shake hands. It will be of a reconciling nature; and I call it an ‘Equal Check to Pharisaism and Antinomianism.’
“I see life so short, and time passes away with such rapidity, that I should be very glad to spend it in solemn prayer; but it is necessary that a man should have some exterior occupation. The chief thing is to employ ourselves profitably. My throat is not formed for the labours of preaching. When I have preached three or four times together, it inflames and fills up; and the efforts, which I am then obliged to make, heat my blood. Thus, I am, by nature, as well as by the circumstances I am in, obliged to employ my time in writing a little. O that I may be enabled to do it to the glory of God!
“Let us love this good God, who hath ‘so loved the world, that He gave His Only-begotten Son that we might not perish, but have everlasting life.’ How sweet is it, on our knees, to receive this Jesus, this heavenly gift, and to offer our praises and thanks to our heavenly Father! The Lord teaches me four lessons; the first is to be thankful that I am not in hell; the second, to become nothing before Him; the third, to receive the gift of God; and the fourth is to feel my want of the Spirit of Jesus, and to wait for it. These four lessons are very deep. O when shall I have learned them! Let us go together to the school of Jesus, and learn to be meek and lowly in heart. Adieu!
“J. FLETCHER.”[286]
Footnote 286:
Letters, 1791, p. 218.
The above is the first time that Fletcher complains of his throat. This affection, in itself, apart from the other reason he mentions, was quite sufficient to justify his hesitancy in complying with Wesley’s request to devote himself to the itinerancy, and to train himself to become Wesley’s successor.
Before returning to the Calvinian controversy, two other incidents, belonging to the year 1773, must be mentioned.
“John Wilkes,” says Fletcher, “was born at Darlaston. His father dying when he was a child, his mother bound him an apprentice to a collier, who delighted in cock-fighting, and who was killed by a quantity of coals falling upon him in the pit. The collier’s widow, being unable to manage Wilkes, released him from his apprenticeship for a trifling sum of money. He began to steal fowls, that he might have the pleasure of fighting those that would fight, and eating those that would not. Two or three years ago he was committed to Stafford jail, and soon after publicly whipped for that offence. From breaking into hen-roosts, he proceeded to break into and to rob the dwelling-house of a widow at Darlaston; and, going upon the highway, he robbed a man of his watch and some money. He was taken, and recommitted to Stafford jail. He took his trial at the last assizes; and, being found guilty of the above-mentioned robberies, received sentence of death, with another young man, who had set fire to some barns, and a stack of hay.”
John Wilkes’ eldest sister was Fletcher’s servant, and to her the convict wrote the following:—
“STAFFORD JAIL, March 17, 1773.
“This informs you of my being a convict under sentence of death. I beg you will endeavour to prevail on Mr. Fletcher to grant me his interest for a reprieve, by getting me recommended to his majesty’s mercy. And I tenderly beg you will come over and see me here in a few days, who am your poor unfortunate brother,
“JOHN WILKES.”
Fletcher declined to interfere, but wrote a long letter to the convict, dated “Madeley, March 23, 1773.” He says:—
“JOHN WILKES,—Your sister desiring me to make application to some person in power, to get you reprieved for transportation, I take this first opportunity of informing you that I was once concerned in saving a young man from the gallows, because he was condemned for his first offence, which was robbing his master of money, and that I had no thanks, but many upbraidings for my pains; the poor creature having turned out very bad, done much mischief before he left England, and being spared, I fear, only to hurt his fellow-creatures, and fill up the measure of his iniquities.
“Besides, you know, John, that your crimes are of the most capital nature. You are not only a housebreaker, but a highwayman, and a very notorious offender. You know you have committed crimes enough to hang two or three men, perhaps half-a-dozen. And so far as I can gather from a variety of circumstances, you are the very person that broke open my house over the way, and robbed the poor widow who lives in it. If you committed that robbery, I desire you to confess it before you leave this world; for ‘he that confesseth and forsaketh his sins shall obtain mercy;’ while he that tells lies to conceal them, pulls down double vengeance upon his guilty head.
“But whether you committed that robbery or not, I earnestly desire that you will submit to your sentence. I neither can nor will meddle in that affair; nor have I any probability of success if I did. Apply then yourself, night and day, to the King of heaven for grace and mercy. If you cry to Him from the bottom of your heart, as a condemned dying man, who deserves hell as well as the gallows; if you sincerely confess your crimes, and beg the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, to intercede for you, it is not too late to get your soul reprieved. He will speak for you to God Almighty; He will pardon all your sins; He will wash you in His most precious blood; He will stand by you in your extremity; He will deliver you out of the hands of the hellish executioner; and, though you have lived the life of the wicked, He will help you to die the death of the penitent. He can feel for poor condemned thieves; for He himself was condemned to be hanged on a tree; not indeed for His own sins, for He never transgressed, but for your crimes and mine.”
“On Saturday, March 27,” continues Fletcher in his narrative, “I gave a few lines for the keeper of Stafford jail, to Sarah Wilkes, the malefactor’s sister, and to Elizabeth Childs, a serious woman, whom she had got to bear her company; and, when I had recommended in prayer the condemned criminals to the Redeemer’s compassion, and their feeble visitors to the protection of Him Who can give wisdom to the simple, they set out to see John Wilkes, and administer some spiritual comfort to him before he launched into eternity.”
The poor women met with a rough reception at Stafford prison. The jailer, a fair specimen of officials in other prisons, at that period, said, “What do you want with John Wilkes? to preach him a sermon, and sing psalms? I know very well what you are, a parcel of canting hypocrites.”
Sarah Wilkes and Elizabeth Childs showed themselves to be apt pupils of the Vicar of Madeley. In the Journal of their nine days’ visit they wrote:—
“We were much discouraged at the jailer’s behaviour. So we agreed to lay the matter before God in prayer, and beg of Him that He would touch the jailer’s heart, and cause him to let us in. The next morning, which was Sunday, after begging hard for grace, wisdom, and courage, we went to the prison; and, to our great surprise, the turnkey opened the door, and, without speaking a word, took us straight to the condemned men, and let us be with them as long as we thought proper; a liberty which we were allowed twice a day till they suffered.”
John Wilkes confessed to the two women that he had robbed the house at Madeley, in which the poor widow lived. He became a penitent. The nine days’ Journal of his sister and Elizabeth Childs concludes thus:—
“Saturday, April 3, the day of his execution, John Wilkes was exceeding happy, and employed in breathing out prayers and praises to God. In the morning, we spent about two hours with him and his fellow-prisoner, praying and praising together in their dungeon, with much brokenness of heart, and many tears of joy and sorrow; for we were both persuaded that John Wilkes had saving faith, and an unshaken well-grounded confidence that God would take him to glory.
“About two hours before the execution, which was between four and five in the afternoon, his sister asked, ‘Dost thou find thyself happy in the Lord?’ To which he answered, ‘Yes, I do, I do, more and more.’
“When they were come to the place of execution, John Wilkes’s companion desired the spectators, especially young people, to take warning by them; which was the more affecting, as he was supposed to be only about twenty years old, and John Wilkes was not above nineteen. They sang and prayed some time under the gallows; and the last words John Wilkes was heard to speak were, ‘Lord, from this place receive me into Thy heavenly kingdom!’”
Some will condemn Fletcher’s action, or rather inaction, in the case of John Wilkes; but, a hundred years ago, public opinion respecting crimes, criminals, and criminal punishment was widely different from the public opinion of the present day. It certainly seems to be a savage thing to hang a youth of nineteen years of age for thieving; but the law of the land authorized this; and Fletcher evidently had but little hope of any good arising from reprievement in a case like that of Wilkes. Perhaps he was right, or perhaps he was wrong. At all events, Wilkes became a penitent thief, and, as such, his sister and his sister’s master had reason to rejoice and to give thanks. Fletcher immediately published a pamphlet on the occasion with the title, “The Penitent Thief; or, a Narrative of Two Women, fearing God, who Visited in Prison a Highwayman, executed at Stafford, April 3, 1773. With a Letter to a Condemned Malefactor. And a Penitential Office, for either a true Churchman, or a dying Criminal, extracted from the Scriptures and the Established Liturgy.”
Nothing more need be said, except that the “Penitential Office” was compiled “entirely from the Scriptures and the Liturgy of the Church of England;” that it was suitable for either a living sinner or a dying thief; and that, to excite, exercise, and increase his own repentance, Fletcher himself was accustomed to use it in his private devotions.
A few weeks after the execution of John Wilkes another event occurred, which must be noticed. The following is taken from Lloyd’s Evening Post, of June 11, 1773:—
“An authentic account of the earthquake at the Birches, about a mile above the bottom of Coalbrookdale, Shropshire.
“In the dead of the night, between Tuesday the 25th and Wednesday the 26th ult., Samuel Wilcocks’s wife, who lived in a small house at the Birches, was sitting up in bed, to take care of one of her children, who was ill, when she perceived the bed shake under her, and observed some balm tea in a cup to be so agitated that it was spilled.
“On Thursday morning, the 27th, Samuel Wilcocks and John Roberts (who likewise lived in the house at the Birches) got up about four o’clock, and, opening their window to see what the weather was, observed a crack in the ground four or five inches wide, and a field sown with oats heaving and rolling like waves of water. The trees moved as if blown with wind, though the air was calm and serene. The Severn (in which at that time was a considerable flood) was much agitated, and seemed to run upwards. The house shook; and, in a great fright, Wilcocks and Roberts roused the rest of the family, and ran out of doors. Immediately, about thirty acres of land, with the hedges and trees standing, moved with great force and swiftness towards the Severn. Near the river was a small wood, in which grew twenty large oaks. The wood was pushed with such velocity into the channel of the Severn, that it drove the bed of the river on the opposite shore many feet above the surface of the water, where it lodged, as did one side of the wood. The current of the river was instantly stopped. This occasioned a great inundation above, and so sudden a fall below, that many fish were left on dry land. The river took its course over a large meadow, and in three days wore a navigable channel. A turnpike road was moved more than thirty yards. A barn was carried about the same distance, and was left as a heap of rubbish in a large chasm. The house” (in which Wilcocks lived) “received but little damage; but the garden hedge was removed about fifty yards. Several long and deep chasms are formed in the upper part of the land from fourteen to upwards of thirty yards wide, in which are many pyramids of earth standing, with the green turf remaining on the tops of some of them. The land on both sides the river is the property of Walter Acton Moseley, Esq., who, we hear, has sustained a damage of six or seven hundred pounds.
“On Friday, the 28th, the Rev. Mr. Fletcher, Vicar of Madeley, preached a sermon upon the ground, to an audience of more than one thousand people. In a most pathetic discourse, he expatiated on the works of Divine Providence; recommended his hearers to prepare for the last great and awful day; and expressed the hope that the present dreadful scene would prove a sufficient warning to them.
“T. ADDENBROOKE.
“Coalbrooke Dale, June 4, 1773..png ”
So long an extract from a newspaper would hardly have been proper in a “Life of Fletcher,” but for the fact that Fletcher himself immediately published a bulky pamphlet of 104 pages, on the same event. Its long title was the following: “A Dreadful Phenomenon described and improved. Being a Particular Account of the Sudden Stoppage of the River Severn, and of the Terrible Desolation that happened at the Birches, between Coalbrook Dale and Buildwas Bridge, in Shropshire, on Thursday morning, May 27, 1773. And the Substance of a Sermon, preached the next day, on the ruins, to a vast concourse of spectators. By John Fletcher, Vicar of Madeley, in Shropshire, and Chaplain to the Right Hon. the Earl of Buchan. Shrewsbury, 1773. Price, One Shilling.”
Thirty-three pages of Fletcher’s publication are filled with a description of the “Dreadful Phenomenon.” This is dated “Madeley, July 6, 1773.” No useful purpose would be served by quoting Fletcher’s account of what he heard and saw; but the following extract will show how he was led to preach his sermon:—
“Should the reader desire to know why I preached upon the ruins, I will ingenuously tell him. The day the earth opened at the Birches, as I considered one of the chasms, several of my parishioners gathered around me. I observed to them, that, the sight before us was a remarkable confirmation of the first argument of a book called, ‘An Appeal to Matter of Fact, or a Rational Demonstration of Man’s Fallen and Lost Estate,’ which I had just published, as a last effort to awaken to a sense of the fear of God the careless gentlemen of my parish, to whom it is dedicated. Having a few copies about me, which I was going to present to some of them, I begged leave to read that argument.
“I concluded my reading and remarks by thanksgiving and prayer; and, perceiving that seriousness sat upon all faces, I told the people, that, if they would come again the next evening to the same place, I would endeavour to improve the loud call to repentance, which God had given us that day.
“They readily consented; and when I came, at the time appointed, to my great surprise, I found a vast concourse of people, and among them several of my parishioners, who had never been at church in all their life. After a prayer and thanksgiving suitable to the uncommon circumstances, I preached a sermon, of which, so far as I can recollect, the reader may find the substance, with some additions, in the following pages. May it have a better effect upon him than it had upon some of the gentlemen who heard it! Instead of a prayer-book, they pulled out their favourite companion, a bottle; and imparted the strong contents to each other, as heartily as I did the awful contents of my text to the decent part of the congregation. Gentle reader, receive them as cordially as they did their stupifying antidote, and I ask no more.”
This, certainly, was a disgraceful scene, but not so disgraceful as that which occurred a few days afterwards, and which Fletcher, in a foot-note, relates. Among the many thousands, who came to view the results of the earthquake, were a company from Bridgnorth, headed by a young clergyman, who “brought music along with them, and set a-dancing upon the very place where the awful earthquake had happened.”
The text of Fletcher’s almost impromptu sermon was Numb. xvi. 30—34. The sermon itself occupies seventy pages. Addressing the irreverent “gentlemen” before him, the bold preacher cried:—
“O ye Christian Dathans, ye lofty Abirams, ye, who, like those proud Israelites, are in your respective parishes ‘princes of the assembly, famous in the congregation, men of renown,’ the eyes of this populous neighbourhood are upon you, especially the eyes of poor illiterate colliers, waggoners, and watermen. Do you not consider that they mind your examples, rather than God’s precepts? Are you not aware that they follow you as a bleating flock follows the first wandering sheep? Because they cannot read the sacred pages, or even tell the first letters of the alphabet, think you they cannot read secret contempt of Almighty God on the sleeves, in which they sometimes see you laugh at godliness? And suppose ye, they cannot make out open pollution of His Sabbaths when they see the remarkable seats, which you so frequently leave empty at church? Do you not know that the lessons of practical atheism, which you thus give them in the free school of bad example, they learn without delay, practise without remorse, and teach others with unwearied diligence? Alas! the pattern of indevotion, which you set in the house of God, carries, before you are aware, its baneful influence through a hundred private houses. Oh! how many are now numbered among the dead, who have taken to the ways of destruction by following you! How many are yet unborn, upon whom a curse will be entailed, in consequence of the spreading plague of irreligion, which their parents have caught from you! And shall not their blood be, more or less, required at your hands? ‘Shall not I visit for these things, saith the Lord? Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?’”
This was fearless speaking, and not likely to increase Fletcher’s popularity among his rich, dissolute parishioners. The following extract is struck upon another key:—
“Although we cannot all ‘sing the song of the Lamb,’ yet, glory be to God! we all consider the patience of our offended Creator, who, upon these ruins, invites us to repent and live. The earth, in the days of Moses, opened her mouth, and dreadfully swallowed up two families. The earth yesterday opened her mouth, probably far wider, and yet the only two families that lived here were suffered to make their escape. Allelujah! Praise the Lord! Multitudes of fishes have perished on dry ground, and myriads of land insects in the waters; and yet we, sinful insects before God, have neither been drowned in yesterday’s flood, nor buried in these chasms: Allelujah! God’s tremendous axe has been lifted up; some of yonder green trees have been struck; and we, who are dry trees, we, cumberers of the ground, are graciously spared; Allelujah! The house of Dathan and Abiram, with all that appertained unto them, descended into the pit of destruction; and we, who are loaded with mountains of sins, stand yet upon firm ground, with all our friends. Allelujah! God, who might have commanded the earth to swallow up a thronged play-house, the royal exchange, a crowded cathedral, the parliament house, or the king’s palace, has graciously commanded an empty barn to sink, and give us the alarm. Allelujah! He might have ordered such a tract of land as this, to heave, move, and open in the centre of our populous cities; but mercy has inclined Him to fix upon this solitary place. Allelujah! He might have suffered the road and the river to be overthrown, when cursing drivers passed with their horses, and blaspheming watermen with their barges; but His compassion made Him strike the warning blow with all possible tenderness. ‘O that men would therefore praise the Lord for His goodness, and declare the wonders that He does for the children of men!’”
These two extracts from the sermon preached on this remarkable occasion must suffice; but one of Fletcher’s foot-notes may be added:—
“A woman, thirty-five years of age, passing before a looking-glass the day after she heard this sermon, was surprised to see an unusual paleness upon her face. She called her husband, told him she was a dying woman, and actually died in a quarter of an hour. She heard me on the Friday, and I buried her the Monday following. Another middle-aged person, who was also among my hearers, was buried the next day in the next parish. How soon may we be called to give an account of what we speak or hear, write or read!”
The anti-evangelical Monthly Review of November, 1773, in noticing Fletcher’s publication, remarked:—
“Mr. Fletcher, who is a man of learning and considerable abilities, has given us a curious account of this phenomenon, which has been so frequently mentioned in our newspapers. He has minutely, but in very flowery language, described the awful appearances left by this extraordinary convulsion of the earth; and he fairly states the different opinions which were formed in regard to the cause of so wonderful an event. Mr. Fletcher tells us that he piously chose to take advantage of the seriousness stamped, by this alarming occurrence, on the minds of the country people, in order to press upon them a proper sense of the first or moral cause of so tremendous a dispensation; and this he has done in a manner as rational as could be well expected from the peculiarity of the occasion and the known enthusiastic spirit of the preacher.”
XIV. “THE FINISHING STROKE,” “THE CHRISTIAN WORLD UNMASKED,” “MR. RICHARD HILL’S THREE LETTERS.”
1773.
AFTER this long and awkward interruption, there must now be a return to the wearisome Calvinian controversy.
Early in the year 1773, Mr. Richard Hill published an 8vo. pamphlet of 57 pages, with the title, “The Finishing Stroke: containing some Strictures on the Rev. Mr. Fletcher’s Pamphlet, entitled Logica Genevensis, or a Fourth Check to Antinomianism.”
“The Finishing Stroke!” remarked the Monthly Review for March, 1773. “No—we are afraid not! We shall certainly have more last words from Shropshire. Here is a fresh attack on the Vicar of Madeley. Mr. Hill does not seem at all inclined to let Mr. Fletcher remain master of the field, for want of an opponent, ‘notwithstanding the resolution he had formed of being silent.’—Vide advert. prefixed to the ‘Finishing Stroke.’”
Mr. Hill’s pamphlet is dated January 2, 1773, and addressed to Fletcher. He begins by saying:—
“Last Saturday, and not before, I received your Logica Genevensis, or Fourth Check to Antinomianism; and am truly sorry to find that neither the spirit of the piece, nor the doctrine it contains, is a jot better than what appeared in the former Checks.”
Mr. Richard Hill was angrier than ever. Want of space renders it impossible to examine his theology; and to quote his calumnious accusations is unsavoury work; and yet the latter must be done, for the employment of these slanders was, at least, one of the reasons why the controversy was continued. Perhaps, Fletcher was not averse to fighting. He liked an honourable contest, especially if it was likely to repress evil, or to promote good. To do this had been his chief, almost his only object during the last two years; but now his own reputation was at stake, and he was bound to defend himself, as well as to defend the doctrines he had expounded and enforced.
“The purest treasure mortal times afford, Is spotless reputation; that away, Men are but gilded loam, or painted clay.”
On the ninth page of his pamphlet, Richard Hill politely asks poor Fletcher, “Can you wonder, Sir, that we look upon you as a spiritual calumniator, and that we accuse you of vile falsehood and gross perversion?”
On the next page, Mr. Hill remarks:—
“I know, Sir, that it was a warm attachment to your friend, which occasioned you to run the lengths you have done. But dear as that friend is to you, truth ought to be dearer still; yet the maxim, which you seem all along to pursue, is, that Mr. Wesley must be vindicated; yea, though all the ministers in the kingdom, yourself not excepted, should fall to the ground. But what makes us still more sensibly feel the power of your pen is that our tenets are most shamefully (would I could say unintentionally) misrepresented, in order to prejudice the world against us, and to make them believe we hold sentiments which from our inmost souls we most cordially detest; particularly with regard to the doctrines of election and perseverance, which you have made to stand upon a pillory as high as Haman’s gallows, dressed up in a frightful garb of your own invention, and then pelted them till all your mud and dirt was exhausted.
“Mr. Wesley has nothing to do but hold up his finger in order to prevent thousands of his followers from ever looking into anything that is written against his own faction, and to make them believe that the Four Checks (as they are called) contain the medulla of the Christian religion. Be this as it will, the unfair quotations you have made, and the shocking misrepresentations and calumnies you have been guilty of, will, for the future, prevent me from looking into any of your books, if you should write a thousand volumes. So here the controversy must end; at least it shall end for me.”
“I cannot, however, conclude without again acknowledging that, in the sight of men, your life is exemplary, and your walk outwardly blameless” (p. 41).
Mr. Richard Hill added a “Postscript” of ten pages to his long letter, the postscript chiefly consisting of extracts from one of Fletcher’s sermons, preached in Madeley Church, eleven years before, and of which Mr. Hill happened to possess a manuscript copy. The text was Rom. xi. 5, 6. Mr. Hill says he regards this sermon as “the best confutation” of Wesley’s “Minutes,” and of Fletcher’s “Checks;” and that, because he so regarded it, he had actually sent it to press; but, doubting the fairness and uprightness of such a proceeding without obtaining the preacher’s permission, he had “stopped the publication.” Mr. Hill, however, now published extracts from the sermon, without Fletcher’s permission; and this induced Fletcher to re-preach his sermon with additions and explanations. This was done in Madeley Church, on May 23, 1773, and the sermon, thus revised, was published in the First Part of Fletcher’s “Equal Check to Pharisaism and Antinomianism,” in 1774.
It would be easy to pick out of Mr. Hill’s “Finishing Stroke” not a few most shameful opprobriums. Fletcher is accused of “descending to the poor illiberal arts of forgery and defamation, in order to blacken his opponents, and to establish his own pernicious principles.” “He had used high-flown sarcastic declamation, base forgeries, and gross misrepresentations.”
Such were some of the acerbities of Richard Hill. He was the slanderer; not Fletcher. The latter was too much a gentleman, to say nothing of his being a Christian, to indulge in such scurrilous vituperation. The two men had been engaged in a theological combat; Hill had been utterly vanquished; and, instead of meekly acknowledging his defeat, he dishonourably abused his victorious opponent. With respect to his conversion, he was more indebted to Fletcher than to any other man; but this was now forgotten. The Vicar of Madeley, whom he had so greatly loved, had become the object of his scorn.
Immediately after the publication of his “Finishing Stroke,” Mr. Richard Hill committed to the press another 8vo pamphlet, of 63 pages, entitled, “Logica Wesleiensis; or, The Farrago Double Distilled. With an Heroic Poem in Praise of Mr. John Wesley.” Mr. Hill, in addressing Wesley, says:—
“I have never seen you above four or five times in my whole life; once in the pulpit at West Street Chapel; once at a friend’s house; and once or twice, at my request, you were so kind as to drink a forbidden dish of tea with me, when I lodged in Vine Street, St. James’s, as I wanted to speak to you concerning a poor man in your connections.“
By his own confession, it is evident that Mr. Hill’s personal knowledge of Wesley was very slight, and yet, in his “Logica Wesleiensis,” he abuses him more ferociously than he had abused Fletcher in his “Finishing Stroke.” Of the contumely hurled at Wesley, nothing will be said here, but two or three extracts concerning Fletcher must be introduced:—
“Mr. Fletcher affirms that all the Protestant Churches, the old Calvinist ministers, and Puritan divines, are on the side of the ‘Minutes.’ Mr. Hill makes it appear, as clear as the sun, that this is a point-blank falsehood as ever was written” (p. 7).
“Mr. Wesley revised, corrected, and gave his own imprimatur to all Mr. Fletcher’s Checks, throughout which, Mr. John is the Alpha and the Omega” (p. 53).[287]
“Since the foregoing pages were finished in manuscript, I have seen Mr. Fletcher’s ‘Logica Genevensis, or Fourth Check to Antinomianism.’ Though I fully intended to have been silent, the many perversions and misrepresentations which I have detected under the cover of much professed candour, will oblige me once more to enter the lists with my able antagonist; but, despairing of my own skill, I must beg leave to call in the Vicar of Madeley, to be my second; and happily for this purpose I have preserved a sermon of his, which was preached by him only a few years ago, in his own parish church, from Rom. xi. 5, 6. I think it is by far the best refutation of the unscriptural doctrine contained in the ‘Minutes,’ and in all the ‘Checks,’ which I have yet seen. As this sermon was publicly delivered before a very numerous congregation, and copies of it handed about, by the preacher’s own permission; and as he tells us that he is determined, God being his helper, to preach the doctrine therein contained, till his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth,—no reasonable person can think that there is the least unfairness in my availing myself of so powerful an ally; and I solemnly declare, upon the word of a Christian, that, in the few extracts I may make from it, I will not alter the least jot or tittle from the manuscript, and only make some marginal notes and observations upon it” (p. 59).
Footnote 287:
This was not true, at all events, so far as the “Fourth Check” was concerned. See Wesley’s Works, vol. x., p. 400.
Mr. Richard Hill might think there was nothing unfair in publishing another man’s manuscript without his permission; but men of honour will disagree with him. Even if the manuscript had contained doctrines at variance with some propounded in Fletcher’s “Checks,” what then? Eleven years had elapsed since the sermon was composed and preached; and surely Fletcher was not to be blamed and lashed if, during such a lengthened period, he had modified some of his theological opinions. Fletcher had no choice left to him but to re-examine his old sermon, and ascertain if it contained anything contrary to the doctrines advocated in his “Checks.”
Meanwhile, another opponent had entered the battle-field. Just at this juncture, honest, and good, though eccentric, John Berridge, Vicar of Everton, published his well-known book, entitled, “The Christian World Unmasked. Pray Come and Peep.” 12mo, 229 pp. The doctrines so quaintly taught by Berridge were the doctrines of Richard Hill and his Calvinistic friends; but Berridge was too loving a Christian to display Richard Hill’s acrimonious spirit. The names of Wesley and Fletcher were not once mentioned in the whole of his performance; though, of course, their tenets were attacked. No one could find fault with this; but Fletcher felt it his duty to answer his dear old friend at Everton. Writing to John Thornton, Esq., on August 18, 1773, Berridge remarked:—
“In a letter, just received from Mr. Fletcher, he says, ‘What you have said about sincere obedience has touched the apple of God’s eye, and is the very core of Antinomianism.[288] You have done your best to disparage sincere obedience, and, in a pamphlet ready for the press, I have freely exposed what you have written.’ Then he cries out, in a declamatory style, ‘For God’s sake, let us only speak against insincere and Pharisaical obedience.’ Indeed, I thought I had been writing against insincere obedience throughout the pamphlet; and that every one, who has eyes, must see it clearly; but I suppose Mr. Fletcher’s spectacles invert objects, and make people walk with their heads downwards.”[289]
Footnote 288:
In a letter to the Rev. John Newton, of Olney, dated September 20, 1773, Berridge said, in his own quaint style, “The Vicar of Madeley has sent me word that my prattle, in my pamphlet of ‘Sincere Obedience,’ ‘is the core of Antinomianism, has exposed St. James, and touched the apple of God’s eye,’ and that he intends to put my head in the pillory, and my nose in the barnacles for so doing.” (“Works of Berridge; and Life by Whittingham,” p. 386.)
Footnote 289:
“Works of Berridge; and Life by Whittingham,” p. 382.
In another letter to the same gentleman, dated thirteen days afterwards, Berridge observed:—
”I thank you for the friendly admonition you gave me respecting Mr. Fletcher. It made me look into my heart, and I found some resentment there. What a lurking devil this pride is! How soon he takes fire, and yet hides his head so demurely in the embers, that we do not easily discover him! I think it is advisable to write to Mr. Fletcher, though despairing of success. His pamphlet will certainly be published now it is finished. Indeed, I have written to him aforetime more than once, and besought him to drop all controversy; but he seems to regard such entreaties as flowing rather from a fear of his pen than a desire of peace. His heart is somewhat exalted by his writings, and no wonder. He is also endowed with great acuteness, which, though much admired by the world, is a great obstacle to a quiet childlike spirit. And he is at present eagerly seeking after legal perfection, which naturally produceth controversial heat. As Gospel and peace, so law and controversy go hand in hand together. How can lawyers live without strife? In such a situation, I know, from my own former sad experience, he will take the Scotch thistle for his motto, Noli me tangere. But his heart seemeth very upright, and his labours are abundant; and I trust the Master will serve him, by-and-by, as he has served me,—put him into a pickling tub, and drench him there soundly. When he comes out, dripping all over, he will be glad to cry, ‘Grace, grace,’ and ‘a little child may lead him.’ We learn nothing truly of ourselves, or of grace, but in a furnace.
“Whatever Mr. Fletcher may write against my pamphlet, I am determined to make no reply. I dare not trust my own wicked heart in a controversy. If my pamphlet is faulty, let it be overthrown; if sound, it will rise above any learned rubbish that is cast upon it. Indeed, what signifies my pamphlet, or its author? While it was publishing, I was heartily weary of it; and have really been sick of it since, and concluded it had done no good because it had met with no opposition.”[290]
Footnote 290:
“Works of Berridge; and Life by Whittingham,” p. 384.
Berridge did write to Fletcher. Hence, in another letter to Mr. Thornton, he said:—
“Everton, September 25, 1773. I have written to Mr. Fletcher, and told him what was my intention in speaking against sincere obedience, and that my intention was manifest enough from the whole drift of my pamphlet. I have also acquainted him that I am an enemy to controversy, and that if his tract is published, I shall not rise up to fight with him, but will be a dead man before he kills me. I further told him I was afraid that Mr. Toplady[291] and himself were setting the Christian world on fire, and the carnal world in laughter, and wished they could both desist from controversy. A letter seemed needful, yet I wrote to him without any hope of success, and it appears there is not any. Mr. Jones, an expelled Oxonian, has just been with him, and called upon me last Saturday. Mr. Fletcher showed him what he had written against my pamphlet. It has been revised by Mr. Wesley, and is to be published shortly.”[292]
Footnote 291:
In the preceding year, Toplady had published his scurrilous pamphlet, with the title, “More Work for Mr. John Wesley; or, A Vindication of the Decrees and Providence of God from the Defamations of a late printed paper, entitled, ‘The Consequence Proved.’”
Footnote 292:
“Works of Berridge; and Life by Whittingham,” p. 387.
Strangely enough, while Berridge was requesting peace from Everton, Richard Hill was doing the same from Hawkstone. Berridge’s three letters to Mr. Thornton cover the space between August 13, 1773, and September 25, 1773; and Richard Hill’s three letters to Fletcher, now to be introduced, cover the space between July 31, 1773, and December 23, 1773. Fletcher answered them privately; but his answers have never been published. Mr. Hill’s letters, too important to be omitted, were as follows:—
“HAWKSTONE, July 31, 1773.
“REV. AND DEAR SIR,—I am credibly informed that you wish to have done with controversy, and that you are resolved to publish nothing more on the subject of the late disputes. Upon the strength of this information, as well as to maintain my own desire of promoting peace, I shall write to my bookseller in London, to sell no more of any of my pamphlets which relate to the ‘Minutes;’ and for whatever may have savoured too much of my own spirit, either in my answers to you, or to Mr. Wesley, I sincerely crave the forgiveness of you both, and should be most heartily glad if no person whatever were to add another word to what has been already said on either side.
”And permit me to hint, that if some restraint could be laid upon several of Mr. Wesley’s preachers, particularly upon one Perronet (of whose superlatively abusive and insolent little piece,[293] I believe, Mr. Charles Wesley testified his abhorrence from the pulpit), I think, under God, it might be a salutary means of preventing the poison of vain janglings from spreading any further. But, though it is the desire of my soul to live in harmony, love, and friendship with you, dear Sir, yet, if God has ever shown me anything of my own heart, or of the truths of His Word, I must, and still do think that your principles are exceedingly erroneous; and of this, I ever cherish a secret hope that God will convince you, in the course of His dealings with your soul.
“Wishing you abundance of grace, mercy, and peace, I beg leave to subscribe myself, Rev. and dear Sir, your sincere friend in the Gospel of Immanuel,
“R. HILL.
“P.S.—I wish, dear Sir, you would make Mr. Wesley acquainted with the contents of this letter; and, if I stop the sale of my books, I hope that of the four ‘Checks’ will be stopped also.”
Footnote 293:
Probably Edward Perronet’s “Small Collection in Verse: containing a Hymn to the Holy Ghost; an Epigram from the Italian,” etc. Printed in 1772. 12mo, 16 pp.
This letter of Mr. Richard Hill, at the first reading, seems to be peaceable and friendly; but there is reason to fear that the principle that prompted it was cowardice rather than courtesy. Mr. Hill had been vanquished more than once; and, naturally enough, he now wished to retire from the arena. This, however, his opponents could not permit, without sending a shaft after him. In his publications just issued, the “Finishing Stroke,” and the “Farrago Double-Distilled,” to say nothing of his previous ones, he had most uncharitably accused Fletcher and Wesley not only of ignorances and mistakes, but of sins. He had called Fletcher a “calumniator;” he had charged him with practising “forgery and defamation,” and “gross misrepresentations,” and “slander.” In the “Farrago Double Distilled,” he had accused Wesley of using “quirks, quibbles, evasions, and false quotations;” and had designated him “a chameleon.” His “Heroic Poem in Praise of Mr. John Wesley” was a disgraceful production, too coarse and vulgar to be quoted. Was it reasonable to wish or expect that no answer should be made to such imputations? Reputation was as dear in the case of John Fletcher and John Wesley as in that of Richard Hill; and, so far as the work of God and the interests of the Church of Christ were concerned, vastly more important. Besides, when Mr. Hill says he was “credibly informed” that Fletcher was “resolved to publish nothing more on the subject of the late disputes,” he was the victim of a delusion, for Fletcher was already preparing his “Fifth Check to Antinomianism.”
Fletcher’s reply to Mr. Hill’s first letter has never been published, but its import may be gathered from Mr. Hill’s second letter to Fletcher, which was as follows:—
“August, 1773.
“REV. AND DEAR SIR,—Attendance at the assizes, and multiplicity of business in my office as a Justice of the Peace, have prevented my returning a more speedy answer to your letter, in which I find you complain of my having treated you with severity.
”This obliges me to request you to call to mind the four ‘Checks,’ and then to say what right the author of them has to complain of severity. Read the sneering mock proclamation given by the four secretaries of state of the predestinarian department; read the charges brought against our celebrated pulpits; and, if you can still justify what you have advanced, you may then with better reason accuse me of severity. It pains me to bring these things to your remembrance, as I was determined, when I wrote last, to avoid every shadow of any accusation against you for what had passed; and I think you must acknowledge that my letter was friendly; but your introduction of the subject obliges me to say what I have. I wish I had any grounds to recall what I have said concerning your having laid very great misrepresentations before the public, in your quotations from Mr. Wesley’s ‘Minutes,’ and in the harmony you would make your readers believe there is between the Reformers and Puritans, and Mr. Wesley and yourself; for it is most sure that your principles and theirs are as wide as east from west.
”How far it may be fair to alter the title of your sermon[294] from what it stands in the manuscript, must be left to yourself; I have no objection to it as you propose to print it. As to your explanatory notes and additions in brackets, you know, Sir, that by these you may easily make the sermon itself speak what language you see proper. Clarke and Priestly, by explanatory notes and additions in brackets, can explain away the divinity of Christ; Socinus, His atonement; and Taylor, the corruption of human nature.
”As you intend to introduce my worthless name into your next publication, I must beg to decline the obliging offer you make of my perusing your MSS. I am, Rev. and dear Sir,
“Your sincere friend for Christ’s sake, “RICHARD HILL.”
Footnote 294:
The sermon preached in Madeley Church, on May 23, 1773, and afterwards published in the “Fifth Check to Antinomianism.”
Mr. Hill’s last letter is the best of the three. It was written soon after his mother’s death, and a short time before Fletcher’s “First Part of the Fifth Check to Antinomianism” was published. Fletcher offered to allow Mr. Hill to read the work in manuscript, but, as Mr. Hill himself states, the offer was declined.
“HAWKSTONE, December 23, 1773.
“REV. AND DEAR SIR,—I take the liberty of requesting you to distribute among the poor of Madeley the enclosed two guineas, in such way and manner as you shall judge fit and proper.
“I sent your last letter to my brother Rowland, who is now at Tottenham Court chapel, and suppose he received it. However, I waive saying anything of the subject of it, as it is my design to have totally done with the controversy, which I am firmly persuaded has not done me any good. Excuse me if I say, I wish you to examine closely whether it has done you any. For my own part, I desire to be humbled before God, as well as to ask your forgiveness and Mr. Wesley’s (to whom I purpose making a visit of peace and love when I go to London), for everything that has savoured of wrong or of my own spirit, in what I have written relative to his ‘Minutes;’ and, though I believe your sentiments to be erroneous, yet I esteem and honour you for all you have said against sin; and for the stand you have made for practical religion in this Laodicean, Antinomian age; and truly concerned should I be, if any expressions have dropped from my pen, which might make the readers think lightly of sin, under the notion of honouring the Saviour from sin. But as God can bear me witness that I had no intentions of this sort, so I am certain that whosoever makes Christ all his salvation, can never at the same time make Him a minister of sin; and I trust the hour will come when, under a deep sense of your own sinfulness and nothingness, you will be glad to lay hold of some of those comfortable Gospel truths, which now you look upon as dangerous poison.
“In consequence of my former letter to you, I wrote to my bookseller in London, and told Mr. Eddowes in Shrewsbury, to stop the sale of all my publications concerning the controversy between us; and, unless God shows me that it is a matter of duty so to do, I shall not revoke this order; it being my earnest desire for the time to come, if it be possible, to live peaceably with all men; and, though I cannot approve some of Mr. Wesley’s doctrines, because I believe them to be contrary to Scripture, and am sure they are contrary to my own experience, yet, as I am persuaded that many who are the excellent of the earth are in his connexion, I wish to confirm my love towards them on account of the grace that is in them; and, whilst I reject their errors, still to esteem their persons; and never to say or do anything that may hurt that common cause for which we all ought to be contending, or which may grieve the weakest or meanest of Christ’s people.
“These, dear Sir, are my present sentiments and intentions, and you have my free permission to declare them upon the house-top.
“An afflictive breach, which God has lately been pleased to make in our family, by depriving me of a most tender and affectionate mother, calls upon me to beg your prayers, that the sudden stroke may be sanctified to me and to us all. It loudly bids me remember that I am but a stranger and pilgrim here below. May the Lord give me a pilgrim’s spirit! and may He give us both a right judgment in all things!
“Permit me to subscribe myself, Rev. and dear Sir, your sincere friend and servant in Christ,
“RICHARD HILL.”
The Christian spirit of this letter cannot be excelled. What a contrast to that of the “Finishing Stroke,” published at the beginning of the year! Mr. Hill gave Fletcher full permission to make known the facts that the controversy had done him no good; that he desired to be humbled before God, and to ask forgiveness of Fletcher and Wesley for everything that had “savoured of wrong,” or of his “own spirit,” in his writings; that he had stopped the sale of his publications; and that he regarded many of Wesley’s people as “the excellent of the earth.”
There can be no doubt that Fletcher availed himself of Mr. Hill’s permission. The facts did honour to Mr. Hill; but, as is often the case, in the course of circulation, the facts were perverted. By no fault of Fletcher, it was reported that Mr. Hill had recanted the doctrines he had so stoutly maintained. This was utterly untrue; and led Mr. Hill to send his three letters to the press.[295] No one could have found fault with this; but, unfortunately, Mr. Hill prefixed a preface to his letters, and appended an appendix.
Footnote 295:
The title was, “Three Letters, written by Richard Hill, Esq., to the Rev. J. Fletcher, Vicar of Madeley, in the year 1773; setting forth Mr. Hill’s Reasons for declining any further controversy relative to Mr. Wesley’s Principles. Shrewsbury.” 8vo., 30 pp.
In his preface, he remarks, that when Wesley heard from Fletcher that he (Mr. Hill) had suppressed the sale of his publications, he wrote Mr. Hill “a short and civil letter,” in which he said, he himself intended to write nothing more on the controversy between them, and expressed the hope that all, in the future, would be love and peace. This communication gratified Mr. Hill, and soon afterwards, when he went to London, he had an interview with Wesley at West-street chapel, and assured him of his intentions to retire from the warfare, and said he wished that nothing more should be said on the subject by any one. Wesley took him by the hand; showed a loving, pacific disposition; and, says Mr. Hill, “we parted very good friends.”
Besides this personal narrative, however, the preface renewed the slanderous attacks on Fletcher, accusing him of misrepresenting facts, of using “artifices in his manner of making quotations;” and “declamation, chicanery, evasion, false glosses, and pious frauds, to throw dust into the eyes of his readers.” Not content with this, he made an onslaught on Thomas Olivers, Wesley’s trenchant Itinerant, who (in 1774) had just published a 12mo book of 168 pages, entitled “A Scourge to Calumny. In Two Parts. Inscribed to Richard Hill, Esq.” He sneeringly calls him “one Thomas Oliver, alias Olivers, a journeyman cordwainer, who had written a pamphlet against him (Mr. Hill), which, though in itself black in the grain, was afterwards lacquered up, new soled, and heel-tapped by his master before it was exposed for sale.”
“I shall not,” continues Mr. Hill, “take the least notice of him, or read a line of his composition,[296] any more than, if I was travelling on the road, I would stop to lash, or even order my footman to lash, every impertinent little quadruped in a village, that should come out and bark at me; but would willingly let the contemptible animal have the satisfaction of thinking he had driven me out of sight.”
Footnote 296:
If Mr. Hill had not read Thomas Oliver’s little book, how is it that he can so graphically describe it?
This was despicable bombast; for the Welsh shoemaker, as a controversial writer, was quite equal to him who, in due time, became a Shropshire baronet. Mr. Hill proceeds to say that he cannot read any more of Fletcher’s books, and, therefore, cannot write any more answers to them; but, because it was now currently reported that he had recanted the doctrines which he had defended, he had revoked his orders to stop the sale of his publications, and that his “Five Letters to Fletcher,” his “Review of Wesley’s Doctrines,” his “Farrago Double Distilled,” his “Paris Conversation,” and his “Finishing Stroke,” might now be bought as heretofore.
The Appendix to Mr. Hill’s Three Letters suggests a proposed title to Fletcher’s works, and sets forth “A Creed for Arminians and Perfectionists,” as follows:—
“ARTICLE I.
“I believe that Jesus Christ died for the whole human race, and that He had no more love towards those who now are, or hereafter shall be, in glory, than for those who now are, or hereafter shall be, lifting up their eyes in torments; and that the one are no more indebted to His grace than the other.
“ARTICLE II.
“I believe that Divine grace is indiscriminately given to all men; and that God, foreseeing that by far the greater part of the world would reject this grace, doth, nevertheless, bestow it upon them in order to heighten their torments and to increase their damnation in hell.
“ARTICLE III.
“I believe it depends wholly on the will of the creature whether he shall or shall not receive any benefit from Divine grace.
“ARTICLE IV.
“Though the Scripture tells me that the carnal mind is enmity against God, yet I believe there is something in the heart of every natural man that can nourish and cherish the grace of God; and that the sole reason why this grace is effectual in some and not in others, is entirely owing to themselves and to their own faithfulness, and not to the distinguishing love and favour of God.
“ARTICLE V.
“I believe that God sincerely wishes for the salvation of many who never will be saved; consequently, that it is entirely owing to want of ability in God that what He so earnestly willeth is not accomplished.
“ARTICLE VI.
“I believe that the Redeemer not only shed His precious blood, but prayed for the salvation of many souls who are now in hell; consequently, that His blood was shed in vain, and His prayer rejected of His Father; and that, therefore, He told a great untruth when He said, ‘I know that Thou hearest me always.’
“ARTICLE VII.
“I believe that God, foreseeing some men’s nature will improve the grace which is given them, and that they will repent, believe, and be very good, elects them unto salvation.
“ARTICLE VIII.
“I believe that the love and favour of Him with whom is no variableness and shadow of turning, and whose gifts and callings are without repentance, may vary, change, and turn every hour and every moment, according to the behaviour of the creature.
“ARTICLE IX.
“I believe that the seed of the Word, by which God’s children are born again, is a corruptible seed; and that, so far from enduring for ever (as that mistaken apostle Peter rashly affirms), it is frequently rooted out of the hearts of those in whom it was sown.
“ARTICLE X.
“I believe that Christ does not always give unto His sheep eternal life; but that they often perish, and are, by the power of Satan, frequently plucked out of His hand.
“ARTICLE XI.
“Though I have solemnly subscribed to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, and have affirmed that I believe them from my heart, yet I think our Reformers were profoundly ignorant of true Christianity, when they declared, in the Ninth Article, that ‘the infection of nature doth remain in them which are regenerate;’ and, in the Fifteenth, that ‘all we, the rest (Christ only excepted), although baptized and born again in Christ, yet offend in many things; and if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.’ This I totally deny, because it cuts up, root and branch, my favourite doctrine of Perfection; and, therefore, let Peter, Paul, James, or John, say what they will; and let reformers and martyrs join their syren song, their eyes were at best but half opened, for want of a little Foundery eye-salve; therefore, I cannot look upon them as adult believers, and fathers in Christ.”
The Eleven Articles were subscribed, “J. F.,” “J. W.,” and “W. S.;” which may be taken as the initial letters of the names of John Fletcher, John Wesley, and Walter Sellon.
“What! more finishing strokes!” remarked the Monthly Review of January, 1775, in its notice of Mr. Hill’s new pamphlet. “This retiring champion, however, like the Parthians of old, is not less formidable in his retreat than in a direct attack. He here lets fly at the Arminians and Perfectionists one of his sharpest pointed arrows. He styles it ‘their creed.’ He says he has ‘composed it from their sentiments;’ and he adds that he ‘can scarcely read it without horror.’ Yet he thinks himself justified in publishing it, as Mr. Fletcher still continued the controversy with so much warmth.”
All this is deeply to be regretted. Mr. Hill had declared his determination to abandon this painful warfare, and yet here he provokes a continuance of it. It is true that, meanwhile, Fletcher had published his “Answer to the Finishing Stroke” of Mr. Hill; but Fletcher had done this, not because he desired the controversy to be prolonged, but because “The Finishing Stroke” contained so many grave attacks on Fletcher’s moral character, that Fletcher’s honour could not be maintained without an “Answer” being written. At this point the war might have ended; but, by appending the “Creed for Arminians and Perfectionists” to his Three Letters, Mr. Hill re-opened the sluice, and “the waters of strife” flowed as fiercely as ever.
From a Calvinian point of view, the “Creed” is drawn up with great ability; but Mr. Hill was well aware that it was a misrepresentation of the sentiments of Fletcher and Wesley. Besides, the thing itself was in bad taste. It must be acknowledged that Fletcher had published his “Gospel Proclamation: Given at Geneva, and signed by four of his Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State for the Predestinarian Department!” but there was no need that Mr. Richard Hill should copy Fletcher’s objectionable example.
It is now time, however, to turn to Fletcher’s masterly replies.
XV. “FIFTH CHECK TO ANTINOMIANISM.”
1774.
IN a characteristic letter addressed to Ambrose Serle, Esq., and dated “January 11, 1774,” Augustus Toplady observed:—
“Mr. Fletcher may fire off as soon as he pleases. The weapons of his warfare can never wound the truths of God, any more than a handful of feathers can batter down my church tower. I shall, however, be glad to see his performance when it appears. Mr. Shirley told me, when I was last at Bath, that Fletcher is to succeed Pope Wesley, as commander-in-chief of the Societies, if he should survive his holiness. No wonder, therefore, that the Cardinal of Madeley is such a zealous stickler for the cause. One would think that the Swiss were universally fated to fight for pay.”[297]
Footnote 297:
“Complete Works of Toplady.”
Toplady’s mendacious sneer that Fletcher was fighting “for pay” may be scornfully passed over. This letter might refer to Fletcher’s “Answer to the Rev. Mr. Toplady’s Vindication of the Decrees,” which Fletcher finished in the month of October, 1775; or it might refer to the expected publication of the “Fifth Check to Antinomianism.” The “First Part” of this was completed at Madeley, September 13, 1773; but was not published until the beginning of 1774. The following was its title: “Logica Genevensis continued: or the First Part of the Fifth Check to Antinomianism, containing an Answer to ‘The Finishing Stroke’ of Richard Hill, Esq. In which some remarks upon Mr. Fulsome’s Antinomian Creed, published by the Rev. Mr. Berridge, are occasionally introduced. With an Appendix upon the remaining difference between the Calvinists and the Anti-Calvinists, with respect to our Lord’s doctrine of Justification by words, and St. James’s doctrine of Justification by works, and not by faith only. London: 1774.” 12mo., 48 pp.
Fletcher’s “Answer” to Richard Hill’s “Finishing Stroke,” and his “Remarks upon Mr. Fulsome’s Antinomian Creed,” are able, and characteristic of the writer; but contain no biographical facts worth mentioning. Two extracts, however, from the “Appendix,” upon the remaining differences between the Calvinists and the anti-Calvinists, may be useful; inasmuch as, in a condensed form, they exhibit the point to which, in Fletcher’s opinion, the controversy had brought both parties with respect to the principal of Wesley’s “Minutes” of 1770. Fletcher writes:—
“On both sides, we agree to maintain, in opposition to Socinians and Deists, that the grand, the primary, and properly meritorious cause of our justification, from first to last, both in the day of conversion and in the day of judgment, is only the precious atonement and the infinite merits of our Lord Jesus Christ. We all agree likewise that in the day of conversion faith is the instrumental cause of our justification before God. Nay, if I mistake not, we come one step nearer each other, for we equally hold that, after conversion, the works of faith are in this world, and will be in the day of judgment, the evidencing cause of our justification; that is, the works of faith (under the above-mentioned primary cause of our salvation, and in subordination to the faith that gives them birth), are now, and will be in the great day, the evidence that shall instrumentally cause our justification as believers. Thus Mr. Hill says [Review, p. 149], ‘Neither Mr. Shirley, nor I, nor any Calvinist that I ever heard of, denies that, though a sinner be justified in the sight of God by Christ alone, he is declaratively justified by works, both here and at the day of judgment.’ And the Rev. Mr. Madan, in his sermon on ‘justification by works stated, explained, and reconciled with justification by faith,’ says [p. 29], ‘By Christ only are we meritoriously justified, and by faith only are we instrumentally justified in the sight of God; but by works, and not by faith only, are we declaratively justified before men and angels.’ From these two quotations, which could easily be multiplied to twenty, it is evident that pious Calvinists hold the doctrine of a justification by the works of faith; or, as Mr. Madan expresses it, after St. James, by works, and not by faith only.
“It remains now to show wherein we disagree. At first sight, the difference seems trifling; but, upon close examination, it appears that the whole antinomian gulf still remains fixed between us. Read the preceding quotations, weigh the clauses which I have put in capitals, compare them with what the Rev. Mr. Berridge says in his ‘Christian World Unmasked’ (p. 26), of ‘an absolute impossibility of being justified in any manner by our works,’ namely, before God; and you will see that though pious Calvinists allow we are justified by works before men and angels, yet they deny our being ever justified by works before God, in whose sight they suppose we are for ever justified by Christ alone,’ i.e., only by Christ’s good works and sufferings, absolutely imputed to us from the very first moment in which we make a single act of true faith, if not from all eternity. Thus works are entirely excluded from having any hand either in our intermediate or final justification before God; and thus they are still represented as totally needless to our eternal salvation. Now, in direct opposition to the above-mentioned distinction, we anti-Calvinists believe that adult persons cannot be saved without being justified by faith as sinners, according to the light of their dispensation; and by works as believers, according to the time and opportunities they have of working. We assert that the works of faith are not less necessary to our justification before God as believers, than faith itself is necessary to our justification before Him as sinners. And we maintain that when faith does not produce good works (much more when it produces the worst works, such as adultery, hypocrisy, treachery, murder, etc.), it dies, and justifies no more; seeing it is a living and not a dead faith that justifies us as sinners; even as they are living and not dead works that justify us as believers.”
Thus did these good men quarrel. Berridge was a man of eminent piety and of great wit, but he could scarcely be considered a great theologian; and it may be fairly doubted whether he ever held the doctrines which Fletcher, perhaps somewhat hardly, deduces from a few of his unguarded words.
In his next pamphlet, which was published March 1, 1774,[298] Fletcher treats poor Berridge with yet greater severity. The whole work was devoted to an exposure of the objectionable and the weak points in Berridge’s “Christian World Unmasked.” Its title was “Logica Genevensis continued. Or the Second Part of the Fifth Check to Antinomianism; containing a Defence of ‘Jack o’ lanthorn,’ and ‘the Paper-kite,’ i.e., Sincere Obedience;—of the ‘Cobweb,’ i.e., The evangelical law of liberty; and of the ‘Valiant Sergeant I. F.,’ i.e., The conditionality of Perseverance, attacked by the Rev. Mr. Berridge, M.A., Vicar of Everton, and late Fellow of Clare-hall, Cambridge, in his book called ‘The Christian World Unmasked.’ London: 1774.” 12 mo., 44 pp.
Footnote 298:
Lloyd’s Evening Post, March 2, 1774.
Berridge was well aware of Fletcher’s intention to attack his book, for Fletcher himself, seven months before, had told him that what he had “said about sincere obedience was the very core of Antinomianism,” and that he must freely expose what he had written. Berridge, in letters to John Thornton, Esq., and the Rev. John Newton, complained of this, and said Fletcher had misapprehended his meaning. He also wrote to Fletcher to the same effect, and told him that, if he published his attack, he (Berridge) would not answer it. There can be no doubt that Berridge never intended to “disparage sincere obedience” to the law of God; but his similes, allegories, figures, and loose language, might be construed by Antinomian readers in such a sense. Fletcher believed Berridge to be a sincere, earnest, obedient Christian; but he also believed that Berridge’s well-meant book might be turned to a bad account by men with whose Antinomian sentiments Berridge had no sympathy. In the introduction to his pamphlet, Fletcher writes:—
“Before I mention Mr. Berridge’s mistakes, I must do justice to his person. It is by no means my design to represent him as a divine, who either leads a loose life, or intends to hurt the Redeemer’s interest. His conduct as a Christian is exemplary; his labours as a minister are great; and I am persuaded that the wrong touches which he gives to the ark of godliness are not only undesigned, but intended to do God service.
“There are so many things commendable in the pious vicar of Everton, and so much truth in his ‘Christian World Unmasked,’ that I find it a hardship to expose the unguarded parts of that performance. But the cause of this hardship is the ground of my apology. Mr. Berridge is a good, an excellent man; therefore the Antinomian errors which go abroad into the world with his letters of recommendation, speak in his evangelical strain, and are armed with the poignancy of his wit, cannot be too soon pointed out and too carefully guarded against. I flatter myself that this consideration will procure me his pardon for taking the liberty of dispatching his ‘valiant sergeant’ with some doses of rational and Scriptural antidote for those who have drunk into the pleasing mistakes of his book, and want his piety to hinder them from carrying speculative into practical Antinomianism.”
It would weary the reader to follow Fletcher in his minute, sometimes pungent, and always irrefutable criticisms on Berridge’s well-known book. There is often plain speaking, but there is no acidity. Berridge is routed, but he is invariably treated as a Christian and a gentleman. Fletcher’s “Conclusion” is as follows:—
“Were I to conclude these strictures upon the dangerous tenets, inadvertently advanced and happily contradicted, in ‘The Christian World Unmasked,’ without professing my brotherly love and sincere respect for the ingenious and pious author, I should wrong him, myself, and the cause which I defend. I only do him justice when I say that few, very few, of our elders equal him in devotedness to Christ, zeal, diligence, and ministerial success. His indefatigable labours in the word and doctrine entitle him to a double share of honour; and I invite all my readers to esteem him highly in love for his Master’s and his work’s sake; entreating them not to undervalue his vital piety on account of his Antinomian opinions; and beseeching them to consider that his errors are so much the more excusable as they do not influence his moral conduct, and that he refutes them himself far more than his favourite scheme of doctrine allows him to do. Add to this that those very errors spring, in a great degree, from the idea that he honours Christ by receiving, and does God service by propagating them.
“The desire of catching the attention of his readers has made him choose a witty, facetious manner of writing, for which he has a peculiar turn; and the necessity I am under of standing his indirect attack[299] obliges me to meet him upon his own ground, and to encounter him with his own weapons. I beg that what passes for evangelical humour in him may not be called indecent levity in me. A sharp pen may be guided by a kind heart; and such, I am persuaded, is that of my much-esteemed antagonist, whom I publicly invite to my pulpit; protesting that I should be edified and overjoyed to hear him enforce there the guarded substance of his book, which, notwithstanding the vein of solifidianism I have taken the liberty to open, contains many great and glorious truths.”
Footnote 299:
As previously stated, Fletcher’s name was not mentioned in Berridge’s book, but the book was intended to ridicule and denounce the doctrines which Fletcher, in his “Checks,” had defended.
In all his publications, Fletcher had not only Wesley’s approval, but his high commendation. In three several letters, written during the present year, 1774, Wesley thus expressed his opinion of Fletcher:—
“March 1, 1774.—He” [James Perfect], “preaches salvation by faith in the same manner that my brother and I have done; and as Mr. Fletcher (one of the finest writers of the age) has beautifully explained it. None of us talk of being accepted for our works; that is the Calvinist slander. But we all maintain we are not saved without works; that works are a condition (though not the meritorious cause) of final salvation. It is by faith in the righteousness and blood of Christ that we are enabled to do all good works; and it is for the sake of these that all who fear God and work righteousness are accepted of Him.”[300]
“May 2, 1774. Until Mr.” (Richard) “Hill and his associates puzzled the cause, it was as plain as plain could be. The Methodists always held, and have declared a thousand times, that the death of Christ is the meritorious cause of our salvation, that is, of pardon, holiness, and glory; loving, obedient faith is the condition of glory. This Mr. Fletcher has so illustrated and confirmed, as, I think, scarcely any one has done before since the Apostles.”[301]
“December 28, 1774. If we could once bring all our preachers, itinerant and local, uniformly and steadily to insist on those two points, ‘Christ dying for us,’ and ‘Christ reigning in us,’ we should shake the trembling gates of hell. I think most of them are now exceeding clear herein, and the rest come nearer and nearer; especially since they have read Mr. Fletcher’s ‘Checks,’ which have removed many difficulties out of the way.”[302]
Footnote 300:
Wesley’s Works, vol xii., p. 372.
Footnote 301:
Ibid, p. 373.
Footnote 302:
Ibid, p. 430.
Such was one of the services which Fletcher, “one of the finest writers of the age,” had rendered to Wesley’s preachers and people as early as the year 1774. They had been in danger of departing from the truth, or, at least, stumbling at it: by Fletcher’s help, they were confirmed in the Christian faith, and henceforth earnestly contended for it.
As already seen, in 1773 Mr. Richard Hill had extended to Fletcher the olive branch of peace; and now the Countess of Huntingdon seems to have done the same. Three years before, she had virtually dismissed him from her Calvinistic College at Trevecca, because he would not renounce what were called the “horrible and abominable” doctrinal “Minutes” of Wesley’s Conference in 1770. Since then, he had been incessantly employed in explaining and defending these “Minutes;” and, in every instance, had vanquished his opponents. Her ladyship, with her strong-mindedness, seemed to perceive this, and wished to have an interview with her disbanded president. She was staying at Bath, and through James Ireland, Esq., of Bristol, the intimate friend of both, her wish appears to have been conveyed to Fletcher; who, in reply, wrote to Mr. Ireland as follows:—
“MADELEY, February 6, 1774.
“MY DEAR FRIEND,—In the present circumstances, it was a great piece of condescension in dear Lady Huntingdon to be willing to see me privately: but for her to permit me to wait upon her openly denotes such generosity, such courage, and a mind so much superior to the narrowness that clogs the charity of most professors, that it would have amazed me, if everything that is noble and magnanimous were not to be expected from her ladyship. It is well for her that spirits are imprisoned in flesh and blood, or I might by this time (and it is but an hour since I received your letter) have troubled her ten times with my apparition, to wish her joy of being above the dangerous snare of professors—the smiles and frowns of the religious world; and to thank her a thousand times for not being ashamed of her old servant, and for cordially forgiving him all that is past, upon the score of the Lord’s love, and of my honest meaning.
“But though, on reading your letter, my mind has travelled so fast to Bath, yet an embargo is laid upon my body—‘I must not go yet.’ I am the more inclined to take the hint, for two reasons. I will tell you all my heart about it. The more I see her ladyship’s generosity, and admire the faithfulness of the friendship that she has for many years honoured me with, the more I ought to take care not to bring burdens upon her. It might lessen her influence with those she is connected with; and might grieve some of her friends, who possibly would look upon her condescension as an affront to them. This is the first reason.
“The second respects myself. I must follow my light. A necessity is laid upon me to clear my conscience with respect to the Antinomian world, and to point out the stumbling-block that keeps many serious people from embracing the real doctrines of free grace. I cannot do this without advancing some truths, which I know her ladyship receives as well as myself, but which, by my manner of unfolding them, will, at first sight, appear dreadful touches to the Gospel of the day. I am just sending to the press ‘A Scriptural Essay upon the Astonishing Rewardableness of the Works of Faith.’ Though it consists only of plain Scriptures, and plain arguments, without anything personal, I think it will raise more dust of prejudice against me than my preceding publications. With respect to myself, I do not mind it; but I am bound in love to mind it with respect to her ladyship. My respect for her ladyship, therefore, together with the preceding reason, determine me to defer paying my respects personally to her, till after the publication of my ‘Essay,’ and ‘Scripture Scales;’ and, if she does not then revoke the kind leave she gives me, I shall most gladly make the best of my way to assure her in person, as I do now by this indirect means, that I am, and shall for ever be her dutiful servant in what appears to me the plain Gospel of our common Lord.
“With love to yourself, and dutiful love to our noble friend, I am, etc.,
“J. FLETCHER.”[303]
Footnote 303:
Letters, 1791, p. 221.
Nothing need be said respecting Fletcher’s considerate kindness in declining, for the present, an interview with the Countess of Huntingdon, lest he should become the means of bringing upon her undeserved reproach from some of her bigoted and narrow-hearted friends. It was like the man, and worthy of him.
In another letter to Mr. Ireland, Fletcher further refers to the returning friendliness of the Countess, and to his controversial and exhausting labours, of which he was becoming weary:—
“MADELEY, March 27, 1774.
“MY DEAR SIR,—I think I wrote my last two days before I received your bounty—a large hogshead of rice and two cheeses. Accept the thanks of myself and of my poor flock. I distributed it on Shrove-Tuesday, and preached to a numerous congregation on ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all other things shall be added unto you.’ We prayed for our benefactor, that God would give him a hundredfold in this life, and eternal life, where life eternal will be no burden. I saw then, what I have not often seen on such occasions, gladness without the appearance of envying or grudging.
“I get very slowly out of the mire of my controversy, and yet I hope to get over it, if God spares my life, in two or three pieces more. Since I wrote last, I have added to my ‘Equal Check’ a piece which I call ‘An Essay on Truth; or, a Rational Vindication of the Doctrine of Salvation by Faith,’ which I have taken the liberty to dedicate to Lady Huntingdon, to have an opportunity of clearing her ladyship from the charge of Antinomianism. I have taken this step in the simplicity of my heart, and as due from me, in my circumstances, to the character of her ladyship.
“I have just spirit enough to enjoy my solitude, and to bless God that I am out of the hurry of the world—even the spiritual world. I tarry gladly in my Jerusalem, till the kingdom of God comes with power. Till then, it matters not where I am: only as my chief call is here, here I gladly stay, till God fits me for the pulpit or the grave. I still spend my mornings in scribbling. Though I grudge so much time in writing, yet a man must do something; and I may as well investigate truth as do anything else, except solemn praying and visiting my flock. I shall be glad to have done with my present avocation, that I may give myself up more to those two things.
“O how life goes! I walked, now I gallop into eternity. The bowl of life goes rapidly down the steep hill of time. Let us be wise: embrace we Jesus and the resurrection. Let us trim our lamps, and give ourselves afresh to Him that bought us, till we can do it without reserve. Adieu!
“J. FLETCHER.”[304]
Footnote 304:
Letters, 1791, p 223.