Fletcher's "Checks" were the best thing born of the controversy. They did not,--need it be said?--finally dispose of the problems respecting God's foreknowledge and sovereignty, and the free agency and responsibility of man. These problems are perhaps much where they were when first confronted. If they are less discussed in our own day than formerly, it is not that the difficulties they present have been solved, but that a juster estimate of the limits of our powers, together with a deeper sense of the antinomies of Divine law, has in a great measure withdrawn the Christian mind from these questions to more remunerative ones. That the doctrines commonly called Calvinistic logically lead either to presumption or despair, may perhaps fairly be urged; that they do so as matter of fact, and on any wide scale, would be difficult to prove. But whether the vulgar antinomianism of Fletcher's day had or had not its roots in Calvinistic doctrine, his handling of it as a practical matter is vigorous and effective in the highest degree. He pursues it in all its forms. He exposes and refutes those one-sided reasonings which "make for _un_righteousness"; he sets forth law in gospel, and gospel in law, with admirable balance and proportion; he exhibits Christian holiness as the sum of duty and the crown of privilege, and breathes throughout a heavenly spirit, which the warmth of controversy seldom, if ever, disturbs. May we say then, as some one has said, "it was worth while to have the Calvinistic controversy, if it were only for the sake of Fletcher's contribution to it"? Our answer is, most emphatically, No. We have too deep a sense of the evils of a long and embittered strife between good men to pass any such judgment. Nor can we suppose that such a controversy furnished the only, or even the most favourable, conditions for the exercise of Fletcher's gifts. We should have preferred for him--can we doubt that he would have preferred for himself?--the opportunity of writing books "touching the King" without the necessity for splitting hairs with Shirley, and for winnowing the coarse abuse of Toplady, and the extravagances of Rowland and Richard Hill.