The Eleven Articles were subscribed, “J. F.,” “J. W.,” and “W. S.;” which may be taken as the initial letters of the names of John Fletcher, John Wesley, and Walter Sellon.
“What! more finishing strokes!” remarked the Monthly Review of January, 1775, in its notice of Mr. Hill’s new pamphlet. “This retiring champion, however, like the Parthians of old, is not less formidable in his retreat than in a direct attack. He here lets fly at the Arminians and Perfectionists one of his sharpest pointed arrows. He styles it ‘their creed.’ He says he has ‘composed it from their sentiments;’ and he adds that he ‘can scarcely read it without horror.’ Yet he thinks himself justified in publishing it, as Mr. Fletcher still continued the controversy with so much warmth.”
All this is deeply to be regretted. Mr. Hill had declared his determination to abandon this painful warfare, and yet here he provokes a continuance of it. It is true that, meanwhile, Fletcher had published his “Answer to the Finishing Stroke” of Mr. Hill; but Fletcher had done this, not because he desired the controversy to be prolonged, but because “The Finishing Stroke” contained so many grave attacks on Fletcher’s moral character, that Fletcher’s honour could not be maintained without an “Answer” being written. At this point the war might have ended; but, by appending the “Creed for Arminians and Perfectionists” to his Three Letters, Mr. Hill re-opened the sluice, and “the waters of strife” flowed as fiercely as ever.
From a Calvinian point of view, the “Creed” is drawn up with great ability; but Mr. Hill was well aware that it was a misrepresentation of the sentiments of Fletcher and Wesley. Besides, the thing itself was in bad taste. It must be acknowledged that Fletcher had published his “Gospel Proclamation: Given at Geneva, and signed by four of his Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State for the Predestinarian Department!” but there was no need that Mr. Richard Hill should copy Fletcher’s objectionable example.
It is now time, however, to turn to Fletcher’s masterly replies.
[287]. This was not true, at all events, so far as the “Fourth Check” was concerned. See Wesley’s Works, vol. x., p. 400.
[288]. In a letter to the Rev. John Newton, of Olney, dated September 20, 1773, Berridge said, in his own quaint style, “The Vicar of Madeley has sent me word that my prattle, in my pamphlet of ‘Sincere Obedience,’ ‘is the core of Antinomianism, has exposed St. James, and touched the apple of God’s eye,’ and that he intends to put my head in the pillory, and my nose in the barnacles for so doing.” (“Works of Berridge; and Life by Whittingham,” p. 386.)
[289]. “Works of Berridge; and Life by Whittingham,” p. 382.
[290]. “Works of Berridge; and Life by Whittingham,” p. 384.