ly good men) would be to let it all be
buried in oblivion. Some of them lived to be ashamed of what they had
written. Rowland Hill, though he still retained his views as to the
doctrines he opposed, lamented in his maturer age that the controversy
had not been carried on in a different spirit.[786] Toplady, after he
had seen Olivers, wrote: 'To say the truth, I am glad I saw Mr. Olivers,
for he appears to be a person of stronger sense and better behaviour
than I had imagined.'[787] Fletcher (who had really the least cause of
any to regret what he had written), before leaving England for a visit
to his native country, invited all with whom he had been engaged in
controversy to see him, that, 'all doctrinal differences apart, he might
testify his sincere regret for having given them the least displeasure,'
&c.[788]

It will be remembered that the Deistical controversy was conducted with
considerable acrimony on both sides; but the Deistical and
anti-Deistical literature is amenity itself when compared with the
bitterness and scurrility with which the Calvinistic controversy was
carried on. At the same time it would be a grievous error to conclude
that because the good men who took part in it forgot the rules of
Christian charity they were not under the power of Christian influences.
The very reverse was the case. It was the very earnestness of their
Christian convictions, and the intensity of their belief in the
directing agency of the Holy Spirit over Christian minds, which made
them write with a warmth which human infirmity turned into acrimony.
They all felt _de vita et sanguine agitur_; they all believed that they
were directed by the Spirit of God: consequently their opponents were
opponents not of them, the human instruments, but of that God who was
working by their means; in plain words, they were doing the work of the
Devil. Add to this a somewhat strait and one-sided course of reading,
and a very imperfect appreciation of the real difficulties of the
subject they were handling (for all, without exception, write with the
utmost confidence, as if they understood the whole matter thoroughly,
and nothing could possibly be written to any purpose on the other side),
and the paradox of truly Christian men using such truly unchristian
weapons will cease to puzzle us.

Two only of the writers in this badly managed controversy deserve any
special notice--viz., Fletcher on the Arminian and Toplady on the
Calvinist side.