“To speak the melancholy truth, how few individuals are free from practical Antinomianism! Setting aside their attendance on the ministry of the Word, where is the material difference between several of our genteel believers and other people? Do not we see the sumptuous furniture in their apartments, and fashionable elegance in their dress? What sums of money do they frequently lay out in costly superfluities to adorn their persons, houses, and gardens! In our fashionable churches and chapels, you may find people professing to believe the Bible, who so conform to this present world as to wear gold, pearls, and precious stones, when no distinction of office or state obliges them to it, in direct opposition to the words of two Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul. Multitudes of professors, far from being convinced of their sin in this respect, ridicule Mr. Wesley for bearing his testimony against it. The opposition he dares to make to that growing branch of vanity affords matter of pious mirth to a thousand Antinomians. Isaiah could openly reprove the haughty daughters of Zion, who walked with stretched forth necks, wanton eyes, and tinkling feet: he could expose the bravery of their fashionable ornaments, their round tires like the moon, their chains, bracelets, head-bands, rings and ear-rings; but some of our humble Christian ladies will not bear a reproof from Mr. Wesley on the head of dress. They even laugh at him as a pitiful legalist, and yet, oh, the inconsistency of the Antinomian spirit! they call Isaiah the evangelical prophet!
“Finery is often attended with an expensive table, at least with such delicacies as our purse can reach. St. Paul kept his body under, and was in fastings often; and our Lord gives us directions about the proper manner of fasting. But the apostle did not know the easy way to heaven taught by Dr. Crisp; and our Lord did not approve of it, or He would have saved Himself the trouble of His directions. In general, we look upon fasting much as we do upon penitential flagellation. Both equally raise our pity; we leave them both to popish devotees. Some of our good old Church people will yet fast on Good Friday: but our fashionable believers begin to cast away that last scrap of self-denial. Their faith, which should produce, animate, and regulate works of mortification, goes a shorter way to work; it explodes them all.”
Fletcher continues to write in the same strain, through many succeeding pages; but one more extract must suffice.
“If these shall go into eternal punishment; if such will be the end of all the impenitent Nicolaitans; if our churches and chapels swarm with them; if they crowd our communion tables; if they are found in most of our houses, and too many of our pulpits; if the seeds of their fatal disorder are in all our breasts; if they produce Antinomianism around us in all its forms; if we see bold Antinomians in principle, bare-faced Antinomians in practice, and sly pharisaical Antinomians,[[250]] who speak well of the law, to break it with greater advantage,—should not every one examine himself whether he is in the faith, and whether he has a holy Christ in his heart, as well as a sweet Jesus upon his tongue; lest he should one day swell the tribe of Antinomian reprobates? Does it not become every minister of Christ to drop his prejudices, and consider whether he ought not to imitate the old watchman, who, fifteen months ago, gave a legal alarm to all the watchmen that are in connexion with him? And should we not do the Church excellent service, if, agreeing to lift up our voices against the common enemy, we gave God no rest in prayer, and our hearers in preaching, till we all did our first works, and our latter end, like Job’s, exceeded our beginning?
“Near forty years ago, some of the ministers of Christ, in our Church, were called out of the extreme of self-righteousness. Flying from it, we have run into the opposite, with equal violence. Now that we have learned wisdom by what we have suffered in going beyond the limits of truth both ways, let us return to a just scriptural medium. Let us equally maintain the two evangelical axioms on which the Gospel is founded: 1. ‘All our salvation is of God, by free grace, through the alone merits of Christ.’ And, 2. ‘All our damnation is of ourselves, through our avoidable unfaithfulness.’”
Fletcher’s pictures are dark: I incline to think a little too dark, though I cannot prove they are. At all events, were existing facts such as he states them to have been, it was high time to sound an alarm in Zion.
In a postscript to his “Three Letters,” Fletcher refers to a pamphlet published by Richard Hill, Esq., respecting a conversation which he and others had held with a monk in Paris.[[251]] Having quoted Mr. Hill’s remark, that, according to the monk, “Popery is about the mid-way between Protestantism and Mr. J. Wesley,” Fletcher proceeds to say:—
“We desire to be confronted with all the pious Protestant divines. But, who would believe it? the suffrage of a papist is brought against us! Astonishing! that our opposers should think it worth their while to raise one recruit against us in the immense city of Paris, where fifty thousand might be raised against the Bible itself!
“So long as Christ, the prophets, and apostles are for us, together with the multitude of the Puritan divines of the last century, we shall smile at an army of Popish friars. The knotted whips, that hang by their side, will no more frighten us from our Bibles, than the ipse dixit of a Benedictine monk will make us explode, as heretical, propositions which are demonstrated to be scriptural.
“I hope the gentlemen concerned in the ‘Conversation,’ lately published, will excuse the liberty of this postscript. I reverence their piety, rejoice in their labours, and honour their warm zeal for the Protestant cause; but that very zeal, if not accompanied with a close attention to every part of the Gospel truth, may betray them into mistakes, which may spread as far as their respectable names. I think it therefore my duty to publish these strictures, lest any of my readers should pay more regard to the good-natured friar, who has been pressed into the service of Dr. Crisp, than to St. John, St. Paul, St. James, and Jesus Christ, on whose plain declarations I have shown that the ‘Minutes’” (of Mr. Wesley) “are founded.”