“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.”
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,’[‘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,