Fletcher's 'Checks to Antinomianism' are still remembered by name (which
is more than can be said of most of the literature connected with this
controversy), and may, perhaps, still be read, and even regarded as an
authority by a few; but they are little known to the general reader, and
occupy no place whatever in theological literature. Perhaps they hardly
deserve to do so. Nevertheless, anything which such a man as Fletcher
wrote is worthy at least of respectful consideration, if for nothing
else, at any rate for the saintly character of the writer. He wrote like
a scholar and a gentleman, and, what is better than either, like a
Christian. Those who accuse him of having written bitterly against the
Calvinists cannot, one would imagine, have read his writings, but must
have taken at second hand the cruelly unjust representation of them
given by his opponents.[789] 'If ever,' wrote Southey, with perfect
truth, 'true Christian charity was manifested in polemical writing, it
was by Fletcher of Madeley.' There is but one passage[790] in which
Fletcher condescends to anything like personal scurrility, in spite of
the many grossly personal insults which were heaped upon him and his
friends.

This self-restraint is all the more laudable because Fletcher possessed
a rich vein of satirical humour, which he might have employed with
telling effect against his opponents.

He also showed an excellent knowledge of Scripture and great ingenuity
in explaining it on his own side. He was an adroit and skilful
disputant, and, considering that he was a foreigner, had a great mastery
over the English language.

What, in spite of these merits, makes the 'Checks' an unsatisfactory
book, is the want of a comprehensive grasp of general principles. In
common with all the writers on both sides of the question. Fletcher
shows a strange lack of philosophical modesty--a lack which is all the
stranger in him because personally he was conspicuous for extreme
modesty and thoroughly genuine humility. But there is no appearance,
either in Fletcher's writings or in those of any others who engaged in
the controversy, that they adequately realised the extreme difficulty of
the subject. Everything is stated with the utmost confidence, as if the
whole difficulty--which an archangel might have felt--was entirely
cleared away. If one compares Fletcher's writings on Calvinism with the
scattered notices of the subject in Waterland's works, the difference
be