At the period we have now reached in Fletcher's history, a certain uneasiness may be discovered in the relations of Arminian and Calvinistic Methodism, not incompatible however with such union and brotherliness as were seen at the great gathering at Trevecca. But Wesley was observing with concern the spread of a practical antinomianism, which on every possible ground he hated and feared. The openly wicked were hopeful and comparatively harmless compared with persons who talked fluently of being justified and sanctified, while they were guilty of drunkenness, uncleanness, and dishonesty. This state of things he could not and would not endure, if it was to be prevented by plainness of doctrine or rigour of discipline. He knew that while such abuses were not the necessary accompaniment of the Scriptural doctrine of faith, they arose from a perversion to which that doctrine will always be exposed, and against which it will be needful to guard, as long as human nature is what it is. Any language therefore that tended to weaken the sense of moral responsibility, or lower the standard of Christian duty, was doubly dangerous in presence of a tendency to dwell upon the Divine sovereignty in redemption, to the neglect of the Divine requirements, as they are revealed to man in the gospel. In Wesley's judgment, his preachers were in danger of encouraging, or at least giving opportunity to, antinomian error by using expressions that had received a kind of general sanction, and refraining from certain others which were thought too legal and unevangelic. But what had this to do with Calvinism? Some writers, more jealous for the character of Wesley's societies than he was, will have it that the abuses referred to were mainly or entirely to be found amongst the Calvinists. But that is not the case. As Mr. Watson has well said: "To show however that antinomianism can graft itself upon other stocks besides that of the Calvinistic decrees, it was found also among the Moravians, and the Methodists did not escape.... In fact, there is no such exclusive connexion between the more sober Calvinistic theories of predestination and this great error, as some have supposed." With this statement Wesley would, we think, have agreed; but he undoubtedly held that antinomianism was a much more natural and likely result of Calvinistic than of Arminian principles.