Toplady had no need to tell Mr. Richard Hill, in 1773, that, in any future replies he might make to the attacks of Wesley, Fletcher, or their friends, he would not be sparing in the language that he used; for, in his “Letter” to Wesley in 1770, and his “More Work for Wesley” in 1772, he had employed abuse which is, perhaps, unparalleled in religious literature, and for which it is difficult to account. Wesley was charged, by this young man of thirty years, with using “all the sophistry of a Jesuit, and the dictatorial authority of a pope.” He had descended to his “customary resource of false quotations, despicable invective, and unsupported dogmatisms.” His “phraseology” was “as pregnant with craft as his conduct” was “destitute of honour.” “By his deep-laid, but soon detected, cunning,—by his avowed vacuity of candour, truth, and shame, he has, in the general estimation of all unprejudiced people, gotten a wound and dishonour and reproach which all his whining and winding sophistry will never be able to wipe away.” “Perversion and falsification are essential figures in this man’s rhetoric.” “Unless God give Mr. Wesley repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, the unparalleled perverseness with which he labours to blacken some doctrines of Christianity will be the burden of his soul in the hour of death and in the day of judgment.”
These are really mild—very mild—specimens of Toplady’s unaccountable abuse of Wesley. How the same man could write, “Rock of ages, cleft for me,” and other hymns quite as exquisite, it is difficult to conceive.
Fletcher’s long-expected reply was published in 1776, with the following title-page, “An Answer to the Rev. Mr. Toplady’s ‘Vindication of the Decrees,’ etc. By the Author of the Checks. London: Printed in the year 1776.” 12mo, 133 pp.
Fletcher disposes of Toplady’s abusive language in his “Introduction.” He writes:—
“If Mr. Toplady, in his controversial heat, has forgotten what he owed to Mr. Wesley and to himself, this is no reason why I should forget the title of my book, which calls me to point out the bad arguments of our opponents, and not their ill humour. If I absurdly spent my time in passing a censure upon Mr. Toplady’s spirit, he would, with reason, say, as he does in the introduction to his ‘Historical Proof,’[[335]] page 35, ‘What has my pride or my humility to do with the argument in hand? Whether I am haughty or meek, is of no more consequence either to that, or to the public, than whether I am tall or short.’ Besides, having, again and again, myself requested our opponents not to wiredraw the controversy by personal reflections, but to weigh with candour the arguments which are offered, I should be inexcusable if I did not set them the example. Should it be said that Mr. Wesley’s character, which Mr. Toplady has so severely attacked, is at stake, and that I ought purposely to stand up in his defence; I reply, that the personal charges which Mr. Toplady interweaves with his arguments have been already fully answered by Mr. Olivers;[[336]] and that these charges being chiefly founded upon Mr. Toplady’s logical mistakes, they will, of their own accord, fall to the ground, as soon as the mistakes on which they rest shall be exposed. May the God of truth and love grant, that, if Mr. Toplady has the honour of producing the best arguments, I, for one, may have the advantage of yielding to them! To be conquered by truth and love, is to prove conqueror over our two greatest enemies,—error and sin.”
What a contrast between Fletcher and Toplady! Both were men of genius; both were scholars; both were clergymen of the Church of England; both were polemics; but one was meek in heart—the other just the opposite; one was a gentleman—the other, notwithstanding his ability and eloquence, was a traducer.
As already stated, the short paragraph which Wesley appended to his abridgment of Toplady’s translation of Zanchius’s “Doctrine of Absolute Predestination Stated and Asserted” infuriated the Vicar of Broad Hembury to an almost incredible degree. Toplady employed, what Fletcher calls, seventy-three “arguments,” but which might more correctly be called dogmatisms, in replying to Wesley’s exposure of Calvinian predestination. Fletcher, in his “Answer,” deals with these, one by one, seriatim. Toplady was overmatched, and his “arguments” were shown to be fallacies. Throughout his able book, Fletcher never loses his temper, and never indulges in vituperation. The strongest language he uses is found in his concluding paragraphs, as follows:—
“I humbly hope that I have, in the preceding pages, contended for the truth of the Gospel, and the honour of God’s perfections. My conscience bears me witness, that I have endeavoured to do it with the sincerity of a candid inquirer after truth; and that I have not, knowingly, leaped over one material difficulty which Mr. Toplady has thrown in the way of the laborious divine whose evangelical principles I vindicate. And now, judicious reader, if I have done my part as a detecter of the fallacies by which the modern doctrines of grace are ‘kept upon their legs,’ let me prevail upon thee to do thy part as a judge, and to say if the right leg of Calvinism, that is, the lawless election of an unscriptural grace, so draws thy admiration as to make thee overlook the deformity of the left leg, that is, the absurd, unholy, sin-ensuring, hell-procuring, merciless, and unjust reprobation which Mr. Toplady has attempted to vindicate. Shall thy reason, thy conscience, thy feelings, thy Bible, and, what is more than this, shall all the perfections of thy God, and the veracity of thy Saviour, be sacrificed on the altar of a reprobation which none of the prophets, apostles, and early fathers ever heard of?—a barbarous reprobation which heated Augustine drew from the horrible error of Manichean necessity, and clothed with some Scripture expressions detached from the context, and wrested from their original meaning?—a Pharisaic reprobation, which the Church of Rome took from him, and which some of our reformers unhappily brought from that corrupted Society into the Protestant Churches?—in a word, a reprobation which disgraces Christianity, when that holy religion is considered as a system of evangelical doctrine, as much as our most enormous crimes disgrace it, when it is considered as a system of pure morality? Shall such a reprobation, I say, find a place in thy creed? yea, among thy doctrines of grace? God forbid!
“I hope better things of thy candour, good sense, and piety. If prejudice, human authority, and voluntary humility, seduce many good men into a profound reverence for that stupendous dogma, be not carried away by their number, or biassed by their shouts. Be not afraid to ‘be pilloried in a preface, flogged at a pamphlet’s tail,’ and treated as a knave, a felon, or a blasphemer through the whole of the next vindication of the deified[[337]] decrees, which are commonly called ‘Calvinism.’ This may be thy lot, if thou darest to bear thy plain testimony against the Antinomian idol of the day.”
Fletcher’s conflict with Toplady was continued. Hence the following “Advertisement,” affixed to the first edition of the book just dismissed:—