f he
had made a discovery, only follows a precedent; for, after the
commencement of the king's trial, this precursor, the same Dr. Peters,
concluding a long prayer at the royal chapel at Whitehall, (he had very
triumphantly chosen his place,) said, "I have prayed and preached these
twenty years; and now I may say with old Simeon, _Lord, now lettest thou
thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy
salvation_."[89] Peters had not the fruits of his prayer; for he neither
departed so soon as he wished, nor in peace. He became (what I heartily
hope none of his followers may be in this country) himself a sacrifice
to the triumph which he led as pontiff. They dealt at the Restoration,
perhaps, too hardly with this poor good man. But we owe it to his memory
and his sufferings, that he had as much illumination and as much zeal,
and had as effectually undermined all _the superstition and error_ which
might impede the great business he was engaged in, as any who follow and
repeat after him in this age, which would assume to itself an exclusive
title to the knowledge of the rights of men, and all the glorious
consequences of that knowledge.

After this sally of the preacher of the Old Jewry, which differs only in
place and time, but agrees perfectly with the spirit and letter of the
rapture of 1648, the Revolution Society, the fabricators of governments,
the heroic band of _cashierers_ of _monarchs_, electors of sovereigns,
and leaders of kings in triumph, strutting with a proud consciousness of
the diffusion of knowledge, of which every member had obtained so large
a share in the donative, were in haste to make a generous diffusion of
the knowledge they had thus gratuitously received. To make this
bountiful communication, they adjourned from the church in the Old Jewry
to the London Tavern, where the same Dr. Price, in whom the fumes of his
oracular tripod were not entirely evaporated, moved and carried the
resolution, or address of congratulation, transmitted by Lord Stanhope
to the National Assembly of France.

I find a preacher of the Gospel profaning the beautiful and prophetic
ejaculation, commonly called "_Nunc dimittis_," made on the first
presentation of our Saviour in the temple, and applying it, with an
inhuman and unnatural rapture, to the most horrid, atrocious, and
afflicting spectacle that perhaps ever was exhibited to the pity and
indignation of mankind. This "_leading in triumph_," a thing in its best