“I am not averse at all, Sir, to your publishing the passages you mention out of my letters to Mr. Ireland. They show my peculiar love and respect for you, which I shall at all times think an honour; and, at this juncture, shall feel a peculiar pleasure to see proclaimed to the world. They apologize for my calling myself ‘_a lover of quietness_,’ when I unfortunately prove _a son of contention_; and they demonstrate that I am not altogether void of the fear that becomes an awkward, inexperienced surgeon, when he ventures to open a vein in the arm of a person for whom he has the highest regard. How natural is it for him to tremble, lest by missing the intended vein, and pricking an unseen artery, he should have done irreparable mischief instead of an useful operation! “But while you do me the kindness of publishing those passages, permit me, Sir, to do Mr. Wesley the justice of informing him, I had also written to Mr. Ireland, that, ‘whether my _Letters_ were suppressed or not, the ‘_Minutes_’ _must_ be vindicated,—that Mr. Wesley owed it to the Church, to the _real Protestants_, to all his Societies, and to his own aspersed character,—and that, after all, the controversy did not seem to me to be so much whether the ‘_Minutes_’ should stand, as whether the Antinomian Gospel of Dr. Crisp[236] should prevail over the practical Gospel of Jesus Christ. “I must also, Sir, beg leave to let my vindicated friend know, that, in the very letter where I so earnestly entreated Mr. Ireland to stop the publication of my Letters to you, and offered to take the whole expense of the impression upon myself, though I should be obliged to sell my last shirt to defray it, I added that, ‘If they were published, I must look upon it as a _necessary evil_, or _misfortune_.’ Which of the two words I used I do not justly recollect: a _misfortune_ for you and me, who must appear inconsistent to the world;—you, Sir, with your Sermons,[237] and I with my Title-page; and nevertheless _necessary_ to vindicate misrepresented truth, defend an eminent minister of Christ, and stem the torrent of Antinomianism.