“The good Bishop of Salisbury has had a plentiful Share in this sort of Treatment: And now at last, some or other has presum’d to burlesque his Lordship in printing a Speech for him, which none that knows his Lordship can believe ever came from him.
“But because it may go down with others who are too apt to take Slander upon trust, and that his Lordship has already been pelted with several Answers to his Speech, I have presum’d to offer the following Considerations, to clear his Lordship from the Suspicion of having vented (in such an august Assembly) those crude and undigested Matters which are set forth in that Speech, and which so highly reflect on his Lordship’s self.”
He has taken the same Method of Irony to attack the said Bishop for his Speech on the Trial of Sacheverel, and for a Sermon, under this Title, “The Good Old Cause, or Lying in Truth; being a Second Defence of the Lord Bishop of Sarum from a Second Speech, and also the Dissection of a Sermon it is said his Lordship preach’d in the Cathedral Church of Salisbury.” And this Pamphlet, which is also a continued Banter, begins thus.
“No Man has more deserv’d than this good Bishop, and no Man has been more persecuted by various Ways and Means than his Lordship, even to mobbing! But the ugliest and most malicious of all these Arts, is that of putting false Things upon him; to write scandalous, seditious, and senseless Papers, and to affix his Lordship’s Name! I was forc’d some Years ago to vindicate his Lordship’s Reputation from one of this sort: That Speech had a Bookseller’s Name to it of good figure, and look’d something like; but this Speech (said likewise to be spoken in the House of Lords) has no body to own it, and has all the Marks of Grub. But the nasty Phiz is nothing to the inside. That discovers the Man; the Heart is false.”
This same Author has thought fit to attack Mr. Hoadley (since a Bishop) in the way of Banter: His Best Answer ever was made, and to which no Answer will ever be made, is by his own Confession a Farce; when he says in his Preface, “If you ask why I treat this Subject by way of farce, and shew a little Merriment sometimes? it was because the Foundation you stand upon is not only false but ridiculous, and ought to be treated with the utmost Contempt.”
Again, in his “Finishing Stroke, in defence of his Rehearsals, Best Answer, and Best of all,” he gives us (p. 125.) what he calls, “A Battle-Royal between three Cocks of the Game, Higden, Hoadley, and a Hottentot;” which in the Contents he calls A Farce, and to which he joins both a Prologue and Epilogue, and divers other Particulars, all taken from the Play-house.
The Reverend Mr. Matthias Earbery sets up for a great Satirist and Drole upon the swearing and Low-Church Clergy, in numerous Pamphlets of late, more particularly in his “Serious Admonition to Dr. Kennet: To which is added, a short but complete Answer to Mr. Marshal’s late Treatise called, A Defence of our Constitution in Church and State; and a Parallel is drawn between him and Dr. Kennet, for the Satisfaction of the unprejudic’d Reader.”
He has a bantering Argument [115] to shew, that, “If in future Ages Mr. Marshal’s Book should escape the just Judgment it deserves, of being condemn’d to the Pastry-Cooks and Grocers, an industrious Chronologist might make an Observation to prove him too young to write it.”
The Parallel is in Pag. 126, which being very gross Raillery, I only refer you to it.
This Mr. Earbery also wrote a Letter to Bishop Fleetwood, under the Title of “A Letter to the Bishop of Ely, upon the Occasion of his suppos’d late Charge, said to be deliver’d at Cambridge August 7, 1716, &c.” in which he pursues the Ironical Scheme laid down in the said Title, and endeavours to vindicate his Lordship from the Aspersion of writing such a mean Pamphlet, as the Charge.