Fletcher, with his talent of quiet cutting irony, might have rebuked the slang of Toplady; but, like a Christian and a gentleman, he, with indignant silence, allows it to pass unnoticed. The task of vanquishing Toplady was not difficult, for seldom has a more absurd theological work than “The Scheme of Christian and Philosophical Necessity” been committed to the press. Fletcher’s “reply” was perfectly unanswerable: poor Toplady was silenced.
It would tire the reader to analyse Fletcher’s work; and two extracts from it must suffice, the first showing with what ease Fletcher dealt with the absurdities of Toplady’s philosophy; and the second exhibiting his desire to live in peace and love with even the rabid Calvinists.
In Chapter III. of his book, Toplady wrote as follows:—
“It seems most agreeable to the radical simplicity, which God has observed in all His works, to suppose, that, in themselves, all human souls are equal. I can easily believe, that the soul of an oyster-woman has, naturally, the unexpanded powers of Grotius, or of Sir Isaac Newton; and that what conduces to raise the philosopher, the poet, the politician, or the linguist, so much above the ignorant and stupid of mankind, is, not only the circumstance of intellectual cultivation, but, still more than that, his having the happiness to occupy a better house, i.e. a body more commodiously organized than they. The soul of a Monthly Reviewer, if imprisoned within the same mud walls which are tenanted by the soul of Mr. John Wesley, would, similarly circumstanced, reason and act, I verily think, exactly like the Bishop of Moorfields. And I know some very sensible people, who even go so far as to suppose, that, were a human soul shut up in the skull of a cat, puss would, notwithstanding, move prone on all fours, purr when stroked, spit when pinched, and birds and mice would be her darling objects of pursuit. Though I cannot carry matters to so extreme a length as this, yet, I repeat my opinion, very much depends on corporeal organization.
“I just now hinted the conjecture of some that a human spirit, incarcerated in the brain of a cat, would, probably, both think and behave as that animal now does. But how would the soul of a cat acquit itself, if enclosed in the brain of a man? We cannot resolve this question with certainty, any more than the other. We may, however, even on this occasion, address every one of our human brethren in the words of that great philosophic necessitarian, St. Paul, and ask, Who maketh thee to differ from the lowest of the brute creation? Thy Maker’s free will, not thine. And what pre-eminence hast thou, which thou didst not receive from Him? Not the least, nor the shadow of any.”
“Admirable divinity!” wrote Fletcher. “So Mr. Toplady leaves the orthodox in doubt,—1. Whether, when their souls and the souls of cats shall be let out of their respective brains or prisons, the souls of cats will not be equal to the souls of men. 2. Whether, supposing the soul of a cat had been put in the brain of St. Paul, or of a Monthly Reviewer, the soul of puss would not have made as great an Apostle as the soul of Saul of Tarsus; as good a critic as the soul of the most sensible Reviewer. And, 3. Whether, in case the ‘human spirit’ of Isaiah ‘was shut up in the skull of a cat, puss would not, notwithstanding, move prone on all fours, purr when stroked, spit when pinched, and birds and mice be her darling objects of pursuit.’ Is not this a pretty large stride, for the first, towards the doctrine of the sameness of the souls of men with the souls of cats and frogs? Wretched Calvinism, new-fangled doctrines of grace, where are you leading your deluded admirers, your principal vindicators? Is it not enough, that you have spoiled the fountain of living waters, by turning into it the muddy streams of Zeno’s errors? Are ye also going to poison it by the absurdities of Pythagoras’s philosophy? What a side-stroke is here inadvertently given to these capital doctrines, ‘God breathed into’ Adam ‘the breath of life, and he became a living soul;’ a soul made ‘in the image of God,’ and not in the image of a cat! ‘The spirit of the beast goeth downward to the earth; but the spirit of man goeth upward; it returns to God who gave it,’ with an intention to judge and reward it according to its moral works.
“But I must do Mr. Toplady justice; he does not yet recommend this doctrine as absolutely certain. However, from his capital doctrine, that human souls have no free-will, no inward principle of self-determination; and from his avowed opinion, that the soul of one man, placed in the body of another man, ‘would, similarly circumstanced, reason and act exactly like’ the man in whose mud walls it is lodged; it evidently follows, 1. That, had the human soul of Christ been placed in the body and circumstances of Nero, it would have been exactly as wicked and atrocious as the soul of that bloody monster was. And 2. That if Nero’s soul had been placed in Christ’s body, and in His trying circumstances, it would have been exactly as virtuous and immaculate as that of the Redeemer; the consequence is undeniable. Thus, the merit of the man Christ did not, in the least, spring from His righteous soul, but from His ‘mud walls’ and from the happiness which His soul had of being lodged in a ‘brain peculiarly modified.’ Nor did the demerit of Nero flow from his free agency and self-perversion, but only from his ‘mud walls,’ and from the infelicity which his necessitated soul had of being lodged in ‘an ill-constructed vehicle,’ and placed on that throne on which Titus soon after deserved to be called ‘the darling of mankind.’ See, O ye engrossers of orthodoxy, to what absurd lengths your aversion to the liberty of the will, and to evangelical worthiness, leads your unwary souls! And yet, if we believe Mr. Toplady, your scheme, which is big with these inevitable consequences, is ‘Christian philosophy,’ and our doctrine of free will is ‘philosophy run mad,’ p. 30.”
Did cat ever play with mouse more perfectly and amusingly than did the Vicar of Madeley with the Vicar of Broad Hembury?
The next extract, which is the conclusion of Fletcher’s triumphant “Reply” to Toplady, shows his intense desire to live in love and peace with his opponents:—
“Mr. Wesley and I are ready to testify upon oath, that we humbly submit to God’s sovereignty, and joyfully glory in the freeness of Gospel grace, which has mercifully distinguished us from countless myriads of our fellow-creatures, by gratuitously bestowing upon us numberless favours, of a spiritual and temporal nature, which he has thought proper absolutely to withhold from our fellow-creatures. To meet the Calvinists on their own ground, we go so far as to allow there is a partial, gratuitous election and reprobation. By this election, Christians are admitted to the enjoyment of privileges far superior to those of the Jews; and, according to this reprobation, myriads of heathen are absolutely cut off from all the prerogatives which accompany God’s covenants of peculiar grace. In a word, we grant to the Calvinists everything they contend for, except the doctrine of absolute necessity; nay, we even grant the necessary, unavoidable salvation of all that die in their infancy. And our love of peace would make us go farther to meet Mr. Toplady, if we could do it without giving up the justice, mercy, truth, and wisdom of God, together with the truth of the Scriptures, the equity of God’s paradisaical and mediatorial laws, the propriety of the day of judgment, and the reasonableness of the sentences of absolution and condemnation, which the Righteous Judge will then pronounce. We hope, therefore, that the prejudices of our Calvinian brethren will subside; and that, instead of accounting us inveterate enemies to truth, they will do us the justice to say, that we have done our best to hinder them from inadvertently betraying some of the greatest truths of Christianity into the hands of the Manichees, Materialists, Infidels, and Antinomians of the age. May the Lord hasten the happy day in which we shall no more waste our precious time in attacking or defending the truths of our holy religion; but bestow every moment in the sweet exercises of Divine and brotherly love!”