“Should any reply be made to this letter, and might I be indulged with liberty to choose my correspondent, I would most earnestly deprecate having anything to do with the Reverend Mr. Walter Sellon, as I am no adept in scolding, and am sorry to see the name of a Christian minister prefaced to such foul and futile productions as those, of Mr. Sellon’s pen. Mr. Fletcher’s pen is indeed more cleanly, but every whit as unfair; and him I object to because he is apt to exclaim against his opponents as enemies to Christian peace, even when he himself does what he can to stab their reputation to the heart. He is very apt grievously to complain of ill-usage from others, when, at the same time, like a madman, he himself keeps flinging abroad firebrands, arrows, and death amongst those who differ from him. Mr. Olivers should be my man, if in future he will guard against shocking common decency, as he has done in his letter to Mr. Toplady, where he is pleased to call Mr. Hervey’s admirable letters to Mr. Wesley _scurrilous_: which _indecency_, although borrowed indeed from _Mr. Walter Sellon_, must needs have an influence fatal to Master Thomas Olivers’ credit as a writer. As to the Rev. Mr. Wesley himself, I do not expect that he can spare so much time as to give a satisfactory answer to my querulous epistle, as it will require his being more explicit than he has hitherto accustomed himself to be.” Enough has been said to show the bitterness of feeling which had already sprung up against Fletcher (to say nothing of Wesley, Sellon, and Olivers), and that it was not surprising he was induced to defend himself against such infamous attacks as those of “Simplex” and his Calvinian friends. Meanwhile, Shirley was passing through the press his “Narrative of the Principal Circumstances relating to the Rev. Mr. Wesley’s late Conference, held in Bristol August the 6th, 1771” (8 vo., 24 pp.) Fletcher refers to this in the following extract from an unpublished letter addressed to Joseph Benson, and kindly lent by Mr. G. J. Stevenson:— “MADELEY, _August 24, 1771_. “MY DEAR FRIEND,—How much water may rush out of a little opening! What are our dear lady’s jealousies come to? Ah, poor College! They are without a master, but not without a mistress. Their conduct and charges of heresy stirred me up to write in defence of the ‘Minutes.’ The pamphlet is gone abroad _unseasonably_ in its present dress. The _toga_ would now suit it, but it wears the _chlamys_. By this means, the voice of the arguments will be lost in the cry of treachery.