Postscript.

POSTSCRIPT.

CONTAINING SOME STRICTURES UPON A NEW PUBLICATION OF

RICHARD HILL, ESQ.

SOME time after I had sent this epistle to the press, one of my neighbours favoured me with the sight of a pamphlet, which had been hawked about my parish by the newsman. It is entitled, Three Letters written by Richard Hill, Esq., to the Rev. John Fletcher, &c. It is a second Finishing Stroke, in which that gentleman gives his “reasons for declining any farther controversy relative to Mr. Wesley’s principles.” He quits the field; but it is like a brave Parthian. He not only shoots his own arrows as he retires, but borrows those of two persons whom he calls “a very eminent minister in the Church of England,” and “a lay gentleman of great learning and abilities.” As I see neither argument nor Scripture in the performances of these two new auxiliaries, I shall take no notice of their ingrafted productions.

With respect to Mr. Hill’s arguments, they are the same which he advanced in his Finishing Stroke: nor need we wonder at his not scrupling to produce them over again, just as if they had been overlooked by his opponent; for, in the first page of his book, he says, “I have not read a single page, which treats on the subject, since I wrote my Finishing Stroke.” But, if Mr. Hill has not read my answer to that piece, some of our readers have; and they will remember that the crambe repetita — I mean his supposition that St. Paul and St. John held Dr. Crisp’s doctrinal peculiarities, is answered in part first of the Fifth Check, [toward the close of the first volume.] As for his common plea taken from the objection, Who hath resisted his will? it is answered in this book.

As Mr. Hill’s arguments are the same, so are also his personal charges. After passing some compliments upon me as an “able defender” of Mr. Wesley’s principles, he continues to represent me as “prostituting noble endowments to the advancing of a party.” He affirms, but still without shadow of proof, that he has “detected many misrepresentations of facts throughout my publications.” He accuses me of using “unbecoming artifices, much declamation, chicanery, and evasion;” and says, “Upon these accounts I really cannot, with any degree of satisfaction, &c, read the works of one who, I am in continual suspicion, is endeavouring to mislead me by false glosses and pious frauds.” If I were permitted to put this argument in plain English, it would run thus: — I bespatter my opponent’s character, therefore his arguments are dangerous and not worth my notice. I do not find it easy to overthrow one of the many scriptures which he has produced against Antinomianism, but I can set them all aside at a finishing stroke; for I can say, “The shocking misrepresentations and calumnies you have been guilty of, will for the future prevent me from looking into any of your books if you should write a thousand volumes. So here the controversy must end.” (Finishing Stroke, p. 40.) When Mr. Hill had explained himself so clearly about his reason for declining the controversy, is it not surprising that he should suffer his bookseller to get sixpence for a new pamphlet, “setting forth Mr. Hill’s reasons for declining any farther controversy relative to Mr. Wesley’s principles?” i.e. to Mr. Wesley’s anti- Solifidian doctrine, of which I profess myself the vindicator. But another author vindicates those principles also. It is Mr. Olivers, whom Mr. Hill calls “one Thomas Oliver, alias Olivers.” This author was twenty five years ago a mechanic, and like “one” Peter, “alias” Simon, a fisherman, and “one” Saul, “alias” Paul, a tent maker, has had the honour of being promoted to the dignity of a preacher of the Gospel; and his talents as a writer, a 1ogician, a poet, and a composer of sacred music, are known to those who have looked into his publications. Mr. Hill informs the public why he takes as little notice of this able opponent’s arguments as he does of mine; and the “reason” he “sets forth” is worthy of the cause which he defends. En argumentum palmarium! “I shall not,” says he, “take the least notice of him, or read a line of his composition, any more than if I was travelling on the road, I would stop to lash, or even order my footman to lash, every impertinent little quadruped in a village, that should come out and bark at me; but would willingly let the contemptible animal have the satisfaction of thinking he had driven me out of sight.” How lordly is this speech! How surprising in the mouth of a good man, who says to the carpenter, My Lord and my God! When the author of “Goliah Slain” dropped it from his victorious pen, had he forgotten, the voluntary humility for which his doctrines of grace are so conspicuous? Or did he come off in triumph from the slaughter of the gigantic Philistine? O ye English Protestants, shall such lordly arguments as these make you submit to Geneva sovereignty? Will you be “lashed,” by such stately logic as this, to the foot of the great image, upon whose back you see absolute preterition written in such large characters? Will you suffer reason and Scripture to be whipped out of the field of controversy in this despotic manner? Shall such imperial cords as these bind you to the horns of an altar, where myriads of men are intentionally slain before they are born, and around which injudicious worshippers so sing their unscriptural songs about finished salvation, as to drown the dismal cries of insured destruction and finished damnation.

Mr. Hill’s performance is closed by “a shocking, not to say blasphemous confession of faith,” in ten articles, which he supposes “must inevitably be adopted, if not in express words, yet in substance, by every Arminian whatsoever,” especially by Mr. Wesley, Mr. Sellon, and myself. As we desire to let true Protestants see the depth of our doctrine, that they may side with us, if we are right, or point out our errors, if we are wrong, I publish that creed, (see the close of vol. i,) frankly adopting what is agreeable to our principles, and returning to Mr. Hill the errors which his inattention makes him consider as necessary consequences of our doctrines of grace.

With respect to the three letters, which that gentleman has published to set forth his reasons for declining the controversy with me, what are they to the purpose? Does not the first of them bear date “July 31, 1773?” Now I beg any unprejudiced person to decide if a private letter, written on July 31, 1773, can contain a reasonable overture for DECLINING THE CONTROVERSY, when the Finishing Stroke, which was given me publicly, and bears date January 1, 1773, contains (page 40) this explicit and final declining of it: “So here the controversy must end, at least it shall end for me. You may misquote and misrepresent whomsoever and whatsoever you please, and you may do it with impunity; I assure you, I shall give myself no trouble to detect you.” The controversy, therefore, was “declined” in January, on the above-mentioned bitter reason. Mr. Hill cannot then reasonably pretend to have offered to decline it in July, six or seven months after this, from sweet reasons of brotherly kindness, and love for peace. “But in July Mr. Hill wrote to his bookseller to sell no more of any of his pamphlets which relate to the Minutes.” True: but this was not declining the controversy; and here is the proof. Mr. Hill still professes “declining any farther controversy about the Minutes,” and yet in this his last publication, (page 11,) he advertises the sale of all the books which he has written against them, from the Paris Conversation to the Finishing Stroke. Therefore, Mr. Hill himself being judge, declining the controversy, and stopping the sale of his books, are different things. Concerning the three letters I shall only add, that I could wish Mr. Hill had published my answers to them, that his readers might have seen I have not been less ready to return his private civilities, than to ward off his public strokes. In one of them in particular, I offered to send him my answer to his Finishing Stroke before it went to press, that he might let me know if in any thing I had misunderstood or misrepresented him; promising to alter my manuscript upon any just animadversion that he might make upon it; because, after his Finishing Stroke, he could not make a public reply without breaking his word. And it is to this proposal that he replies thus in his second letter: “As you intend to introduce my worthless name into your next publication, I must beg to decline the obliging offer you make of my perusing your manuscript.”

With respect to that gentleman’s character, this after clap does not alter my thoughts of it. I cannot but still love and honour him on many — very many accounts. Though his warm attachment to what he calls “the doctrines of grace,” and what we call “the doctrines of limited grace and free wrath,” robs him, from time to time, of part of the moderation, patience, and meekness of wisdom, which adorn the complete Christian character; I cannot but consider him as a very valuable person. I do not doubt but when the paroxysm of his Calvinistic zeal shall be over, he will be as great an ornament to the Church of England in the capacity of a gentleman, as he is to civil society in the capacity of a magistrate. And justice, as well as love, obliges me to say, that, in the meantime, he is in several respects a pattern for all gentlemen of fortune; few equalling him in devoting a large fortune to the relief of the poor, and their leisure hours to the support of what they esteem the truth. Happy would it be for him, and for the peace of the Church, if, to all his good qualities, he always added “the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit;” and if he so far suspected his orthodoxy, as to condescend to weigh himself in the Scripture Scales.