Chapter CLXXIII

MORE CONCERNING ASGILL. HIS DEFENCE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, HIS EXPULSION, FARTHER SPECULATIONS AND DEATH.

Let not that ugly Skeleton appear!
Sure Destiny mistakes; this Death's not mine!

DRYDEN.

The substance of Asgill's argument has been given in his own words, but by thus abstracting and condensing it his peculiar manner is lost. This though it consisted more perhaps in appearance than in reality, is characteristic of the author, and may be well exemplified in the concluding passage of one of his political pamphlets:

“But I shall raise more choler by this way of writing,
For writing and reading are in themselves commendable things,
But 'tis the way of writing at which offence is taken,
And this is the misfortune of an Author,
That unless some are angry with him, none are pleased.
Which puts him under this dilemma,
That he must either ruin himself or his Printer.

“But to prevent either, as far as I can, I would rather turn Trimmer and compound too. And to end all quarrels with my readers (if they please to accept the proposal,

And to shew withal that I am no dogmatical Author,)

I now say to them all, in print, what I once did to one of them, by word of mouth. Whoever meets with any thing in what I publish, which they don't like,

_Let 'em strike it out._
But to take off part of the Odium from me,
They say others write like me,
In short paragraphs:
(An easy part of a mimick,)
But with all my heart!
I don't care who writes like me,
So I do'nt write like them.”

Many a book has originated in the misfortunes of its Author. Want, imprisonment, and disablement by bodily infirmity from active occupation, have produced almost as many works in prose or rhyme, as leisure, voluntary exertion, and strong desire. Asgill's harmless heresy began in an involuntary confinement to which he was reduced in consequence of an unsuccessful speculation; he had engaged in this adventure (by which better word our forefathers designated what the Americans call a _spec_,) with the hope of increasing his fortune, instead of which he incurred so great a loss that he found it necessary to keep his chamber in the Temple for some years. There he fell to examining that “Book of Law and Gospel,” both which we call the Bible; and examining it as he would have perused an old deed with the hope of discovering in it some clause upon which to ground a claim at law, this thought, he says, first came into his head; but it was a great while coming out. He was afraid of his own thoughts, lest they were his own only, and as such a delusion. And when he had tried them with pen, ink and paper, and they seemed to him plainer and plainer every time he went over them, and he had formed them into an Argument, “to see how they would bear upon the proof,” even then he had no intention of making them public.

“But writing an ill hand,” says he, “I resolved to see how it would look in print. On this I gave the Printer my Copy, with money for his own labour, to print off some few for myself, and keep the press secret. But I remember before he got half way through, he told me his men fancied I was a little crazed, in which I also fancied he spoke one word for them and two for himself. However I bid him go on; and at last it had so raised his fancy that he desired my leave to print off one edition at the risque of his own charge, saying he thought some of the Anabaptists would believe it first. I being just then going for Ireland, admitted him, with this injunction, he should not publish them 'till I was got clear out of Middlesex; which I believe he might observe; though by what I heard afterwards, they were all about town by that time I got to St. Albans: and the book was in Ireland almost as soon as I was, (for a man's works will follow him,) with a noise after me that I was gone away mad.”

Asgill was told in Ireland that the cry which followed him would prevent his practice; it had a contrary effect, for “people went into Court to see him as a Monster and heard him talk like a man.” In the course of two years he gained enough by his profession to purchase Lord Kenmure's forfeited estate, and to procure a seat in the Irish House of Commons. The purchase made him enemies; as he was on the way to Dublin he met the news that his book had been burnt by Order of the House. He proceeded however, took the oaths and his seat, and the Book having been condemned and executed without hearing the author in its defence, nothing more was necessary than to prove him the Author and expel him forthwith, and this was done in the course of four days. After this he returned to England and obtained a seat for Bramber, apparently for the mere sake of securing himself against his creditors. This borough he represented for two years; but in the first Parliament after the Union some of the Scotch Members are said to have looked upon it as a disgrace to the House of Commons that a man who enjoyed his liberty only under privilege should sit there, and instead of attempting to remedy a scandal by straight forward means, they took the easier course of moving for a Committee to examine his book. Their report was that it was profane and blasphemous, highly reflecting upon the Christian Religion. He was allowed however to make his defence, which he thus began.

“Mr. Speaker, this day calls me to something I am both unapt and averse to—Preaching. For though, as you see, I have vented some of my thoughts in religion, yet I appeal to my conversation, whether I use to make that the subject of my discourse. However that I may not let this accusation go against me by a _Nihil dicit_, I stand up to make my defence. I have heard it from without doors that I intended to withdraw myself from this day's test and be gone; which would have given them that said it an opportunity to boast that they had once spoken truth. But _quo me fata trahunt_, I'll give no man occasion to write _fugam fecit_ upon my grave-stone.”

He then gave the history of his book and of his expulsion in Ireland, and thanked the House for admitting him to a defence before they proceeded to judgement. “I find,” said he, “the Report of the Committee is not levelled at the argument itself which I have advanced, nor yet against the treatise I have published to prove it, but against some expressions in that proof, and which I intend to give particular answers to. But there is something else laid to my charge as my design in publishing that argument, of higher concern to me than any expressions in the treatise, or any censure that can fall on me for it; as if I had wrote it with a malicious intention to expose the scriptures as false, because they seemed to contain what I asserted; and that therefore if that assertion did not hold true, the Scripture must be false. Now whether this was my intention or no, there is but one Witness in Heaven or Earth can prove, and that is He that made me, and in whose presence I now stand, and Who is able to strike me dead in my place; and to Him I now appeal for the truth of what I protest against: that I never did write or publish that argument with any intention to expose the Scriptures; but on the contrary, (though I was aware that I might be liable to that censure, which I knew not how to avoid) I did both write and publish it, under a firm belief of the truth of the Scriptures: and with a belief, (under that) that what I have asserted in that argument is within that truth. And if it be not, then I am mistaken in my argument and the Scripture remains true. Let God be true and every man a lyar. And having made this protestation, I am not much concerned whether I am believed in it or not; I had rather tell a truth than be believed in a lie at any time.”

He then justified the particular passage which had been selected for condemnation, resting his defence upon this ground, that he had used familiar expressions with the intent of being sooner read and more readily understood. There was indeed but a single word which savoured of irreverence, and certainly no irreverence was intended in its use: no one who fairly perused his argument but must have perceived that the levity of his manner in no degree detracted from the seriousness of his belief. “Yet,” said he, “if by any of those expressions I have really given offence to any well-meaning Christian, I am sorry for it, though I had no ill intention in it: but if any man be captious to take exceptions for exception sake, I am not concerned. I esteem my own case plain and short. I was expelled one House for having too much land; and I am going to be expelled another for having too little money. But if I may yet ask one question more; pray what is this blasphemous crime I here stand charged with? A belief of what we all profess, or at least what no one can deny. If the death of the body be included in the Fall, why is not the life of the body included in the Resurrection? And what if I have a firmer belief of this than some others have? Am I therefore a blasphemer? Or would they that believe less take it well of me to call them so. Our Saviour in his day took notice of some of little faith and some of great faith, without stigmatizing either of them with blasphemy for it. But I do not know how 'tis, we are fallen into such a sort of uniformity that we would fain have Religion into a Tyrant's bed, torturing one another into our own size of it only. But it grows late, and I ask but one saying more to take leave of my friends with. I do believe that had I turned this Defence into a Recantation, I had prevented my Expulsion: but I have reserved my last words as my ultimate reason against that Recantation. He that durst write that book, dares not deny it!”

“And what then?” said this eccentric writer, when five years afterwards he published his Defence. “Why then they called for candles; and I went away by the light of 'em: and after the previous question and other usual ceremonies, (as I suppose) I was expelled the House. And from thence I retired to a Chamber I once had in the Temple; and from thence I afterwards surrendered myself in discharge of my bail, and have since continued under confinement. And under that confinement God hath been pleased to take away, ‘the Desire of mine Eyes with a stroke,’ which hath however drowned all my other troubles at once; for the less are merged in the greater;

_Qui venit hic fluctus, fluctus supereminet omnes._

And since I have mentioned her, I'll relate this of her. She having been educated a Protestant of the Church of England, by a Lady her Grandmother, her immediate parents and other relations being Roman Catholics, an honest Gentleman of the Romish persuasion, who knew her family, presented her, while she was my fellow-prisoner, with a large folio volume, being the history of the Saints canonized in that Church, for her reading; with intention, as I found, to incline her that way. With which, delighting in reading, she entertained herself 'till she shad gone through it; and some time after that she told me that she had before some thoughts towards that religion, but that the reading that history had confirmed her against it.

“And yet she would never read the book I was expelled for 'till after my last expulsion; but then reading it through, told me she was reconciled to the reasons of it, though she could not say she believed it. However she said something of her own thoughts with it, that hath given me the satisfaction that she is ‘dead in Christ,’ and thereby sure of her part in the first Resurrection: the Dead in Christ shall arise first. And this _pars decessa mei_ leaving me half dead while she remains in the grave, hath since drawn me, in diving after her, into a nearer view and more familiar though more unusual thoughts of that first Resurrection than ever I had before. From whence I now find that nothing less than this _fluctus decumanus_ would have cast me upon, or qualified me for, this theme, if yet I am so qualified. And from hence I am advancing that common Article in our Creed, the Resurrection of the Dead, into a professed study; from the result of which study I have already advanced an assertion, which (should I vent alone) perhaps would find no better quarter in the world than what I have advanced already. And yet, though I say it that perhaps should not, it hath one quality we are all fond of,—it is News; and another we all should be fond of, it is good News: or at least, good to them that are so, ‘for to the froward all things are froward.’

“Having made this Discovery, or rather collected it from the Word of Life; I am advancing it into a Treatise whereby to prove it in special form, not by arguments of wit or sophistry, but from the evidence and demonstration of the truth as it is in Jesus: which should I accomplish I would not be prevented from publishing that edition to gain more than I lost by my former; nor for more than Balak ever intended to give, or than Balaam could expect to receive, for cursing the people of Israel, if God had not spoilt that bargain. I find it as old as the New Testament, ‘if by any means I may attain the Resurrection of the Dead.’ And though Paul did not then so attain, (not as if I had already attained,) yet he died in his calling, and will stand so much nearer that mark at his Resurrection. But if Paul, with that effusion of the Spirit upon him in common with the other Apostles, and that superabundant revelation given him above them all, by that rapture unto things unutterable, did not so attain in that his day; whence should I a mere Lay, (and that none of the best neither) without any function upon me, expect to perfect what he left so undone?—In pursuit of this study I have found, (what I had not before observed) that there are some means since left us towards this attainment, which Paul had not in his day; for there now remain extant unto the world, bound up with that now one entire record of the Bible, two famous Records of the Resurrection that never came to Paul's hands; and for want whereof, perhaps, he might not then so attain. But having now this intelligence of them, and fearing that in the day of Account I may have a special surcharge made upon me for these additional Talents and further Revelations; and bearing in mind the dreadful fate of that cautious insuring servant who took so much care to redeliver what he had received _in statu quo_ as he had it that it might not be said to be the worse for his keeping, I have rather adventured to defile those Sacred Records with my own study and thoughts upon them, than to think of returning them wrapt up in a napkin clean and untouched.

“Whether ever I shall accomplish to my own satisfaction what I am now so engaged in, I do not yet know; but 'till I do, I'll please myself to be laughed at by this cautious insuring world, as tainted with a frenzy of dealing in Reversions of Contingencies. However in the mean time I would not be thought to be spending this interval of my days by myself in beating the air, under a dry expectancy only of a thing so seemingly remote as the Resurrection of the Dead: like Courtiers-Extraordinary fretting out their soles with attendances in ante-rooms for things or places no more intended to be given them than perhaps they are fit to have them. For though I should fall short of the attainment I am attempting, the attempt itself hath translated my Prison into a Paradise; treating me with food and enamouring me with pleasures that man knows not of: from whence, I hope, I may without vanity say,

_Deus nobis hæc otia fecit._”

What the farther reversion might be to which Asgill fancied he had discovered a title in the Gospels, is not known. Perhaps he failed in satisfying himself when he attempted to arrange his notions in logical and legal form, and possibly that failure may have weakened his persuasion of the former heresy: for though he lived twenty years after the publication of his Defence and the announcement of this second discovery in the Scriptures, the promised argument never appeared. His subsequent writings consist of a few pamphlets in favour of the Hanoverian succession. They were too inconsiderable to contribute much towards eking out his means of support, for which he was probably chiefly indebted to his professional knowledge. The remainder of his life was past within the Rules of the King's Bench Prison, where he died in 1738 at a very advanced age, retaining his vivacity and his remarkable powers of conversation to the last. If it be true that he nearly attained the age of an hundred (as one statement represents) and with these happy faculties unimpaired, he may have been tempted to imagine that he was giving the best and only convincing proof of his own argument. Death undeceived him, and Time has done him justice at last. For though it stands recorded that he was expelled the House of Commons as being the Author of a Book in which are contained many profane and blasphemous expressions, highly reflecting upon the Christian Religion! nothing can be more certain than that this censure was undeserved, and that his expulsion upon that ground was as indefensible as it would have been becoming, if, in pursuance of the real motives by which the House was actuated, an Act had been past disqualifying from that time forward any person in a state of insolvency from taking or retaining a seat there.

In the year 1760 I find him mentioned as “the celebrated gentleman commonly called ‘translated Asgill.’” His name is now seen only in catalogues, and his history known only to the curious:—“_Mais, c'est assez parlé de luy, et encore trop, ce diront aucuns, qui pourront m'en blasmer, et dire que j'estois bien de loisir quand j'escrivis cecy; mais ils seront bien plus de loisir de la lire, pour me reprendre._”[1]

[Footnote 1: BRANTOME.]