Fletcher’s reply to Mr. Hill’s first letter has never been published, but its import may be gathered from Mr. Hill’s second letter to Fletcher, which was as follows:— “_August, 1773._ “REV. AND DEAR SIR,—Attendance at the assizes, and multiplicity of business in my office as a Justice of the Peace, have prevented my returning a more speedy answer to your letter, in which I find you complain of my having treated you with severity. ”This obliges me to request you to call to mind the four ‘Checks,’ and then to say what right the author of them has to complain of severity. Read the sneering mock proclamation given by the four secretaries of state of the predestinarian department; read the charges brought against our celebrated pulpits; and, if you can still justify what you have advanced, you may then with better reason accuse me of severity. It pains me to bring these things to your remembrance, as I was determined, when I wrote last, to avoid every shadow of any accusation against you for what had passed; and I think you must acknowledge that my letter was friendly; but your introduction of the subject obliges me to say what I have. I wish I had any grounds to recall what I have said concerning your having laid very great misrepresentations before the public, in your quotations from Mr. Wesley’s ‘Minutes,’ and in the harmony you would make your readers believe there is between the Reformers and Puritans, and Mr. Wesley and yourself; for it is most sure that your principles and theirs are as wide as east from west. ”How far it may be fair to alter the title of your sermon[294] from what it stands in the manuscript, must be left to yourself; I have no objection to it as you propose to print it. As to your explanatory notes and additions in brackets, you know, Sir, that by these you may easily make the sermon itself speak what language you see proper. Clarke and Priestly, by explanatory notes and additions in brackets, can explain away the divinity of Christ; Socinus, His atonement; and Taylor, the corruption of human nature. ”As you intend to introduce my worthless name into your next publication, I must beg to decline the obliging offer you make of my perusing your MSS. I am, Rev. and dear Sir, “Your sincere friend for Christ’s sake, “RICHARD HILL.” Footnote 294: The sermon preached in Madeley Church, on May 23, 1773, and afterwards published in the “Fifth Check to Antinomianism.” Mr. Hill’s last letter is the best of the three. It was written soon after his mother’s death, and a short time before Fletcher’s “First Part of the Fifth Check to Antinomianism” was published. Fletcher offered to allow Mr. Hill to read the work in manuscript, but, as Mr. Hill himself states, the offer was declined.