It becomes an interesting inquiry to ask in what relation Mr Wesley’s letter stood to “The Secret History of the Calves-head Club,” to the strong language used in the dedicatory preface of Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion, to the bounty of Queen Anne, to the “Occasional Conformity Bill,” and to the speech of his faithful and affectionate friend, Archbishop Sharpe? This is a question which we cannot answer, but that his letter was deemed an important one is evident from the attention it attracted, and the excitement it occasioned.[164] ----- Footnote 164: Burnet, in his _History of His Own Time_, (folio ed., vol. ii. p. 247,) mentions some other important facts belonging to this period. He says, the Dissenters had quarrels and disputes among themselves. The Independents were raising the old Antinomian tenets, and the Presbyterians were accusing the Baptists of giddiness. One Asgil, a member of Parliament, published a book to prove that since believers recovered in Christ all that they lost in Adam, they are now rendered immortal by Christ, and not liable to death. George Keith, who, for thirty-six years, had been the most learned man among the Quakers, now discovered that the Quakers were Deists, and treated the Christian religion as allegorical; upon which he opened a new meeting to convince the Quakers of their errors; and, having failed in doing so, he was reconciled to the Established Church, and entered into holy orders. The clergy also were much divided. Those who were now called the High-Church party, had all along expressed a coldness to the present settlement, and now began to complain about the grievances of the clergy, and the danger the Church was in. Atterbury, who by his great ability and eloquence, had become one of their leaders, attacked the supremacy of the crown in ecclesiastical affairs, and the hot men of the clergy readily entertained his notions. ----- Most of the facts contained in Mr Wesley’s letter have been already given in the third and fourth chapters of this work, and hardly anything can be added here. One of Wesley’s most offensive assertions is that the Dissenters are “a sort of people none of the best-natured in the world,” though he admits that “all or most of his relations and acquaintances” belong to that denomination. He adds, that, he was deterred “writing lest he should be thought ungrateful to those from whom, for some years, he received his bread; and also, lest what he said should increase existing animosities.” He says he “honours some of the Dissenters and pities others, without hating any.” His statements must have been galling; but we are bound to say there is no appearance of an acrimonious spirit. Had his opponents possessed and evinced the same good-tempered moderation, the controversy would not have been so painful and discreditable as what it was.