“1. Most of the things laid to your charge were grown into habit before they broke out in my presence. It is not the first time that you have been seen in liquor, and been heard to use profane expressions, and to make sport of the things of God, and turn my labours into ridicule. “2. So public an offence absolutely demands a public punishment, and the officers, whom I have informed of your behaviour, must be perjured if they present you not, and an irreparable blow will be given to the honour of religion and morality. “3. The regard I have for our Church, and the peace of the parish, obliges me to resist in you the persecuting spirit of opposition your Church is so noted for. “4. Part of my business here as a clergyman of the Church of England is to withstand the propagation of your dangerous principles, and to oppose the increase of the blind persecuting zeal which some seem to breathe after you. If you are suffered openly to excite that profane zeal with impunity, how will your misled companions be confirmed in their errors. If you, who have so many laws to curb you, can offend with impunity, how daring will others grow in wickedness. “5. A person of note in the parish has lately undergone the severity of the law for part of the above-mentioned charges. What intolerable partiality would it be in the officers and me to take no notice of you who are guilty of the whole. “Lastly. If I do not get you presented, I shall for ever deprive myself of the liberty of repressing profaneness, immorality, and persecution in my parish. Every drunkard, every swearer, every railer, etc., etc., will (and not without reason) say to me, ‘You could spare Mr. Haughton, who was notoriously guilty of our errors; why should you be stricter with Protestants than with Papists?’ “I flatter myself that these reasons will convince you that I am led by Christian prudence and a calm resolution to oppose triumphing profaneness, and not at all by any private views or uncharitable motives. And, wishing that, if you are convicted, the course of human laws may lead you to the harbour of temperance and piety, “I remain, Sir, your humble and obedient servant, “J. FLETCHER.” Of course, opinions differ as to the expediency of trying to make men moral by Acts of Parliament; but there can be no doubt of Fletcher’s Christian sincerity in the action he took against Mr. Haughton. His effort, however, was a failure. Writing to Charles Wesley, in the month of July, 1762, he said:—