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;