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what it was to be ascribed to ) we were passed by and forgotten . An equal dividend was made of the sum received , among those that received it , and each person disposed of what he received as he thought best ; generally shewing an account to the rest , how it was disposed of , that so several might not give to the same persons . A charge was snven that this
matter should be kept secret ; nor was there any occasion to make a common talk of it ; and I believe it was kept as much a secret as a
thing of that nature , with which so many were acquainted , could well be expected to be , though , by degrees it became first suspected and afterwards more known than
were to be desired . iC Nor was this the first instance of kindness of this sort , that the dissenting ministers had received from the court . Bishop Burnett ( History of his own Times , vol . i . p . 308 . ) takes notice , in the reign of king Charles the Second , — * ' That the Presbyterian ministers waiting on that prince in a body , there was an order given , to pay an yearly pension of fifty pounds to most of them ; and of a hundred pounds a year to the chief of the party . " He says , iC that Baxter sent back his pension , and would not touch it * But , says he , most of them took it , "—and I cannot see why they should not . cc All this , ' * says he , Ci I say upon Dr , Stillingfleet's word ; who assured me , he knew the truth of it . And , in particular , he told me , that Pool , who wrote the Synopsis of the Critics , confessed to him , that he had fifty pounds for two years . " However , in the tail there comes a sting , —
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ic thus * " says he , the court hired them to be silent ; and the greatest part of them were so ; and very compliant , ' which is an
unkind reflection , that I should have thought might very well have been spared ; unless it could have been shown , that they were silent , in any matter in which , ( as cir « cumstances stood ) it was their
duty to have spoken with freedom ; or compliant in any thing that was really blameable or that had an ill tendency . If silence with regard to the Papists , and their principles and practices , be the thing here referred to , it deserves
to be considered , that none , at that time , wrote better againsl Popery , than Mr . Pool , in his Dialogues , and his Nullity of the Romish faith ; and Mr . David
Clarkson in his tract , entitled , The Practical Divinity of the Papists proved destructive to Christianity and the Souls of Men . The body of the Popish controversy was gone over bv a good number
of the very ministers that received this money from the court , in the Morning Exercise against Popery , which was printed in the year 1675 , which , was within three years of the lime , in which this reflection was made on their
conduct : and for that reason , it was not just to charge them either with a silence , or compliance , of which they were not truly guilty . But as for those who received the
bounty of King George the First whose interest was so visibly interwoven with that of his good subjects , and who , through the whole ot his reign , so constantly acted as one sensible it was so ; there was ia his reign nothing to be silent about , unless it was , the continuance upo *
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322 History of the Regium Donum .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1811, page 322, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2417/page/2/
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