[with her L- -p] what to do in the present case. Methinks I dream, when I reflect, I have written on controversy! the last subject I thought I should have meddled with. I expect to be roughly handled on the account. Lord, prepare me for this, and everything that may make me cease from man, and, above all, from your unworthy friend, "J. F."

Three months after, he writes as follows, in answer to a letter of mine, in which I had taken the liberty of advising him to use much precision in stating the scriptural doctrine respecting works being the necessary fruits of faith. His words demonstrate the deep humility of his mind, and the mean opinion he had of himself, even as a writer, in which province he certainly greatly excelled. "I thank you for your caution about works. I sent, last week, a letter of fifty pages upon Antinomianism to the Book-Steward. I beg, as upon my bended knees, you would revise and correct, and take off quod durius sonat [what sounds harsh] in point of works [subject], reproof, and style. I have followed my light, which is but that of smoking flax : put yours to mine. I am charged hereabouts with scattering firebrands, arrows, and death. Quench some of my brands, blunt some of my arrows, and take off all my deaths, except that which I design for Antinomianism.

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As I have taken up my pen, I will clear myself in another respect, that is, with regard to the Antinomian opposition made to Christian Perfection. I have begun my tract, and hope to tell the truth in perfect consistency with Mr. Wesley's system. I once begged you would give me a copy of what you wrote upon it. Now is the time to repeat that request. Send it me, (with additions if you can,) as soon as possible. When I send my manuscripts to London, remember, it will be chiefly for your alterations and corrections."

30. The reader will observe, that, at this time, his Appeal to Matter of Fact and Common Sense, that admirable treatise on the subject of original sin and human depravity, was not published. It had, indeed, been composed near a year before. I saw it in manuscript, at Madeley, the January preceding, and read most of it over with him; while his humility induced him constantly to urge, as in the above letter, that I

would propose any alterations or corrections which I thought proper to be made. In his next letter, dated December 10, he mentions the apprehension he was under that the manuscript was lost. He had left it at Bristol; and having sent for it from thence, with a view to make some further improvements in the style and matter, before it was sent to the press, it had not arrived as expected, nor been heard of for many weeks. However, 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. I hardly know a treatise that has been so universally read, or made so eminently useful.

31. Mr. Fletcher's pen, however, was chiefly employed at this time and thenceforward, as long as his health permitted him to write at all, on controversial subjects; subjects in which he first engaged with great reluctance, which he never loved, which he was frequently disposed to have relinquished, had a sense of duty permitted him so to do, but which he never repented having undertaken to discuss and elucidate. It is true, he met with no little opposition, and even reproach, while he was engaged in writing on these subjects. As he says in a letter to Mr. Charles Wesley, written about this time, he "met with the loss of friends, and with the charges of novel chimeras on both sides." Some that had loved him as their own souls before, being vexed and chagrined at finding their favourite opinions, which they had laid as the foundation of their hopes, undermined and overthrown, poured forth their abuse in a very liberal manner. One warm young man in particular, whom I well knew, and who, while a student at Trevecka, had revered and loved Mr. Fletcher as a father, after using many reproachful expressions, added, as a finishing stroke, "If you die in the faith your book maintains, you will be shut out of heaven." "You see by this," says Mr. Fletcher to me, in the letter in which he mentions that circumstance, "I cut rather deeper than our friends can bear." This was in February, 1772, when his Third Check, in answer to the author of Pietas Oxoniensis, was in the press; at which

time he says, "I long to be out of controversy: I make a bridge in my postscript for a retreat; " which words were dictated, not by any distrust of the truth or importance of the principles he had espoused, or of his ability, through divine aid, to defend them; but by his love of peace and unanimity among the followers of Jesus, and his great and constant aversion to dispute and contention.

32. That Mr. Fletcher had no doubt that controversy, on some occasions, is both expedient and necessary, yea, and productive of much good to the church of God, is certain from what he observes on this subject in the beginning of the last-mentioned tract. Mr. Hill had said in the title-page of his Five Letters, to which the tract was an answer, that a concern for " mourning backsliders, and such as have been distressed by reading Mr. Wesley's Minutes, or the Vindication of them," had induced him to write: "Permit me to inform you in my turn," says Mr. Fletcher,* *"that a fear lest Dr. Crisp's balm should be applied, instead of the balm of Gilead, to Laodicean loiterers, who may haply have been brought to penitential distress, obliges me to answer you in the same public manner in which you address me. Some of our friends will, undoubtedly, blame us for not yet dropping the contested point; 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 spiritual 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 Nicolaitanes, who abused St. Paul's doctrine to Antinomian purposes. Had it not been for controversy, Romish Priests would to this day have fed us with Latin masses and a wafer God. Some bold propositions, advanced by Luther against the doctrine of indulgences, unexpectedly brought on the

*Third Check, p. 3. † Dr. Crisp was an Antinomian in doctrine.

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," proceeds Mr. Fletcher, "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 lately been made on 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 Honourable and Rev. Mr. Shirley, I presume to face, I trust in the spirit of love and meekness, my new, respectable opponent."

Such were Mr. Fletcher's views when he began his Third Check, and they were not changed when he had finished it; nor, indeed, when he had finished the Fourth, which he wrote in the spring of this same year. A friend has favoured me with a letter of his, in his own handwriting, to Mr. Charles Perronet, son of the Rev. Vincent Perronet, Vicar of Shoreham, Sept. 7, 1772, in which he observes, "Mr. Hill, sen., has complimented me with eleven Letters," (including the former five, in answer to which he wrote the Third Check, and the latter six, which were answered in the Fourth,)" and his brother, Mr. R. Hill, with another, one half of which is employed in passing sentence upon my spirit. I have answered them both in a Fourth Check, which I hope will decide the controversy about the important antiCrispian doctrine of justification by [the evidence of] works in the last day. If that doctrine stand, there is an end of imputed righteousness," (that is, in the Antinomian sense of the phrase,)" absolute election and predestination. And I do not see that they have anything to object to it but mere cavils which disgrace their cause.'

33. The intelligent and pious person, to whom this letter was written, was at that time under affliction, which had considerably reduced his strength, and depressed his spirits. The reader will be pleased, and I

hope also profited, by Mr. Fletcher's address to him on this occasion, which I copy from the same letter.

"MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,

"No cross, no crown: the heavier the cross, the brighter the crown. I wish you joy, while I mourn, about the afflictions which work out for you an exceedingly greater weight of glory: [greater, he means, than he could otherwise have enjoyed :]

'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 see things visible as temporal, fading; as a shadowy cloud that passes away. By faith we live upon the invisible, eternal God: we believe that in him we live, move, and have our being: we begin to feel after, find, and enjoy our Roor; and insensibly we slide from self into God, from the visible into the invisible, from the carnal into the spiritual, from time into eternity. Here all husks of flesh and blood break. Here our spirits are ever young; they live in and upon the very fountain of strength, sprightliness, and joy. I grant that the unhappy medium of corruptible flesh and blood stands much in our way; but, if it hinder us from enjoying God, it makes way for our giving more glory to him, by believing his naked truth. O, my friend, let us

rest more upon the truth as it is in Jesus, and it will make us more abundantly free, till we are free indeed; free to suffer as well as to triumph with him. 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 am persuaded that if you study him, you will see new beauties in him in that point of view. Perpetual comforts are hardly consistent with a state of trial. (I except the comforts that are inseparable from a calm acquiescing in the truth, and the enjoyment of a good conscience.) Our bodies cannot long bear raptures; but the silent beams of truth can always insinuate themselves into the believing soul, to stay it upon the couch of pain, and in the arms of death. I see Christ the