Again, on page 168, Toplady’s reader is told that—

“Mr. Wesley is the lamest, the blindest, and the most self-contradictory waster of ink and paper, that ever pretended to the name of reasoner. ’Tis almost a disgrace to refute him.”

Again, on p. 172, Toplady writes:—

“Mr. Wesley’s heat and prophaneness are such, that he dares to scold his Maker with as little ceremony, and with as much scurrility, as an enraged fish-woman would be-din the ears of a ’prentice wench.”

Was Toplady a Christian? It is difficult to answer that question. A more monstrous combination of opposing qualities has seldom figured on the stage of human life. He was now thirty-four years of age.[[341]] Three years and a-half later he was dead.

It is needless to furnish an outline of Toplady’s bold book. What he attempted to expound and prove will be found in the following extracts:—

“I own myself very fond of definitions. I therefore præmise[[342]] what the necessity is, whose cause I have undertaken to plead. I would define necessity to be that, by which, whatever comes to pass cannot but come to pass (all circumstances taken into the account); and can come to pass in no other way or manner than it does” (p. 12).

Again, on page 157, he writes:—

“For my own part, I solemnly profess, before God, angels, and men, that I am not conscious of my being endued with that self-determining power, which Arminianism ascribes to me as an individual of the human species. Nay, I am clearly certain that I have it not. I am also equally certain that I do not wish to have it; and that, were it possible for my Creator to make me an offer of transferring the determination of any one event, from His own will to mine, it would be both my duty and my wisdom to entreat that the sceptre might still remain with Himself, and that I might have nothing to do in the direction of a single incident, or of so much as a single circumstance.”

The principles wrapped up in the definition and the confession of Toplady are what he tries to vindicate; and to refute them was the task Fletcher undertook. Fletcher’s pamphlet was published in 1777, with the following title: “A Reply to the Principal Arguments by which the Calvinists and Fatalists support the Doctrine of Absolute Necessity: being Remarks on the Rev. Mr. Toplady’s ‘Scheme of Christian and Philosophical Necessity.’ By John Fletcher, Vicar of Madeley, Salop. London, 1777.” 12mo, 80 pp.