“Your sincere friend for Christ’s sake,
“Richard Hill.”
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,