It appears that Mr. Watson’s conduct obtained much notice; for he preached another sermon at Halifax, entitled “Moderation; or a candid disposition towards those that differ from us, recommended and enforced.” This he also printed, with the avowed view of “promoting of that moderation towards all men which becometh us as Christians, is the ornament of our profession, and which we should therefore labour to maintain, as we desire to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.” He proceeds to observe in this discourse, that “whoever reflects upon the nature of human constitutions, will readily allow the impossibility of perfection in any of them; and whoever considers the mutability of human things, will grant that nothing can be so well devised, or so sure established, which, in continuance of time, will not be corrupted. A change of circumstances, to which the best constituted state is liable, will require such alterations as once would have been needless: and improvement of observation will demand such regulations as nothing else could have discovered to have been right. Of this the wise founders of the established church of England were very sensible; they prudently required no subscription to perfection in the church, well knowing that they but laid the foundation stone of a much greater building than they could live to see completed. The Common Prayer, since it was first properly compiled, in the year 1545, has undergone sixteen alterations, as defects became visible, and offence was thereby given to the promoting of separations and divisions: noble examples these—fit for the present age to imitate! for, as ninety years have elapsed since the last review, this experienced age has justly discovered that the amendments, at that time made, were not sufficient. I could produce you many instances; but I forbear; for I am very sensible how tender a point I am discussing. However, I cannot but observe, that for my own part, upon the maturest and most sober consideration, I take him to be a greater friend to Christianity in general, and to this church in particular, who studies to unite as many dissenters as may be to us, by a reasonable comprehension, than he who is against it.”
It is urged by Mr. Watson, that the church of England herself does not claim a perfection which is insisted upon as her distinguishing quality by some of her over zealous advocates. He says, “The first reformers were wise and good men, but the Common Prayer they published was little better than popery itself; many indeed have been the alterations in it made since then; but as, through the unripeness of the times, it never had any but imperfect emendations, we may reasonably suppose it capable of still further improvements.” Deeming the service appointed for this day as inappropriate, and referring to suggestions that were in his time urged upon public attention for a review of the liturgy, he proceeds to say, “There may be men at work that misrepresent this good design; that proclaim, as formerly, the church’s danger; but let no arts like these deceive you; they must be enemies in disguise that do it, or such who have not examined what they object to with sufficient accuracy. What is wished for, your own great Tillotson himself attempted: this truly valuable man, with some others but little inferior to himself, being sensible that the want of a sufficient review drew many members from the church, would have compromised the difference in a way detrimental to no one, beneficial to all; and had he not been opposed by some revengeful zealots, had certainly completed what all good men have wished for.”
The Editor of the Every-Day Book has Mr. Watson’s private copies of these printed tracts, with manuscript additions and remarks on them by Mr. Watson himself. It should seem from one of these notes, in his own hand-writing, that his opinions were not wholly contemned. Regarding his latter discourse, he observes that “the late Dr. Sharp, archdeacon of Northumberland, in a pamphlet, called ‘A Serious Inquiry into the Use and Importance of External Religion;’ quotes this sentence, “Where unity and peace are disregarded, devotion must be so too, as it were by natural consequences. I have borrowed these words from a sermon preached at Halifax, by John Watson, A. M., which, if any man, who has sixpence to spare, will purchase, peruse, and lay to heart, he will lay out his time and his money very well.” Archdeacon Sharp was father of the late Granville Sharp, the distinguished philanthropist and hebraist.
Mr. Watson was born at Presburg, in Cheshire, and educated at Brazen Nose college, Oxford, where he obtained a fellowship. He wrote a History of Halifax, in 2 vols. 4to., 1775; and a History of the Warren Family, by one of whom he was presented to the rectory of Stockport, where he died, aged 59 years. He also wrote a review of the large Moravian hymn book, and several miscellaneous pieces. There is a portrait of him by Basire.
By those who believe that Charles was “guiltless of his country’s blood,” and that the guilt “of his blood” is an entail upon the country not yet cut off, it may be remarked as a curious fact, that at about that season, eighty years after the king “bowed his head” on the scaffold at Whitehall, it was “a very sickly time.” It is recorded, that in 1733 “people were afflicted this month with a head-ach and fever which very few escaped, and many died of; particularly between Tuesday, the twenty-third, and Tuesday, the thirtieth of January, there died upwards of fifteen hundred in London and Westminster.”[46] On the twenty-third of January, 1649, the king having peremptorily denied the jurisdiction of the court, the president, Bradshaw, “ordered his contempt to be recorded: on the thirtieth of January he was beheaded.” During these days, and the intervening ones, the fatal London head-ach prevailed in 1733.