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all religion but a device of policy . But s ^ ee what a hook the Lo rd put in the nostrils of this barking dog . It so fell out that as ho purposed to stab one whom he owed a
grudge unto , with his dagger , the other party , perceiving , so avoided the stroke , that withal
catching hold of his wrist , he stabbed his own dagger into his own head , in such soit that , notwithstanding all the means of surgery , he shortly after died thereof : the manner of his death
being so terrible , ( for he even cursed and blasphemed to his last gasp , and together with his breath an oath flew out of his mouth ) that it was not only a manifest sign of God ' s judgment , but also a horrible and fearful
terror to all who beheld him , ' ' This passage is quoted by Wood ( A . O . i . 338 ) who fixes the cjeath of Marlow before 1593 , Thomas Beard is the only
authority to whom he refers , but he adds , as the circumstance of Marlow ' s death , that he was cut off in a disgraceful fray , with a rival in his attachment to a
licentious woman , and that his < c end was noted by all , especially the precisians / ' The late Mr . Warton , in his u History of English Poetry , " ( iii . 420 , 37 ) could not fail to notice the dramatic celebrity of Marlow . He says , also , that he Ci translated the
elegies of Ovid , which were printed at Middleburgh , and burnt at Stationers Hall in 1599 > by command of the Archbishop of
Canterbury , and Bishop of London , " and that ic his scepticism , what , ever it might be , was construed by the prejudiced and peevish Puritans into absolute Atheism . " Mr . Warton refers on this subject
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I" " ' i < i ^ Meres Wits , Tr . fal . 287 , and * Account of the blasphemous and damnable opinions of Christ . Marley , and three others , who came to a sudden and fearful
end of this life . M . SS . Harl . 6853 . 80 , fol . 320 /' Wood ' s authority , for the disgraceful circumstances of Marlow ' s death , does not appear , and Wood has been accused of no small
propensity to detraction . The assertion of Beard that Marlow Ci denied God , " is quite inconsistent with his having 4 * blasphemed the Trinity , " which generally means nothin 2 worse than tin
assertion of the divine Unity : and if Marlow " wrote books" on the subject , I confess I would gladly recover them . His opinion of Moses might be only that of the late Dr . Geddes , which he held , however unaccountably , in strict connection with a Christian faith
and practice . Marlow ' s supposed invectives against Christ and his dying horrors , are too much in the style of polemic rant to be easily credited . I cannot better conclude this , than with the
following passage , from Cibber ' s Lives of the Poets , vol . i . under the article Marloe : 44 What credit may be due to Mr . Wood ' s severe representation of this poet ' s character ^ the rea * der must judge for himself . For
my part , I am willing to susperid my judgment till I meet with some other testimony of his having thus heinously offended ngaihst his God and against the best and most amiable system of religion , that ever was or ever can be .
Marloe might possibly be inclined to Free-thinking , withput running the unhappy lengths that Mr . Wood tells us it was reported he
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118 Book-Worm . No . XIL
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1814, page 118, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2437/page/46/
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