“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.