“If we only join faith and works in all our preaching, we shall not fail of a blessing. But of all preaching, what is usually called gospel preaching is the most useless, if not the most mischievous: a dull, yea, or lively harangue on the sufferings of Christ, or salvation by faith, without strongly inculcating holiness. I see, more and more, that this naturally tends to drive holiness out of the world.” “I have scarce had a day yet” (December 15) “in London, except Sundays, and the time of visiting the classes. Dr. Ford has never come near me. I am afraid, _evasit_, _erupit_. I have wrote to Mr. Fletcher to-day. As Mr. Hill is to fall upon me next, Mr. Fletcher will have a little time to breathe; and probably a little more while Mr. Hill is digesting my reply; for whom I think we shall, between us, find work for some time. “You will not set shoulder to shoulder, or you could say something about the Church. Two are better than one. If we live till August, stand by me, and we will put the matter home. “I often cry out, _Vitæ me redde priori_! Let me be again an Oxford Methodist. I am often in doubt whether it would not be best for me to resume all my Oxford rules, great and small. I did then walk closely with God, and redeem the time. But what have I been doing these thirty years? My love to all. Adieu!--JOHN WESLEY.”[177] The concluding sentences of these extracts sound strangely. Did afflicted Wesley, amid the London fog of a dark December day, really think, that the last thirty years had been comparatively wasted, and that he was more pious when almost a cloistered monk within the walls of Oxford, than he was now, a veteran evangelist, flying through the three kingdoms, and preaching the gospel of God his Saviour? His medical adviser came not near him; Sir Richard Hill was wantonly assailing him; his brother, except as a localised pastor in London and in Bristol, was of no use to him; his wife,--bah! Is it surprising, that even Wesley had seasons of depression; and that, like others, he was sometimes “in heaviness through manifold temptations”? But it is time to turn to the Calvinian controversy, which we left raging in 1771. Wesley rarely mentions it, either in his journal or in his letters, and yet it continued with undiminished fury. Fletcher, of Madeley, again entered the field of battle, by publishing “A Third Check to Antinomianism,” in a letter to Sir Richard Hill, 12mo, 114 pages. This was not only a defence of Wesley, but a triumphant answer to the “Five Letters” of the baronet, and is written in a style exceedingly beautiful and Christian. Before the year was out, it reached a second edition.