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
1 BRANTOME.