Note 123 — Chapter VII

The Archbishop could with little propriety have set on foot such a prosecution, having in the early part of his life exceeded Anet in the latitude of his irreligion. Whether he incited it or not, I do not know. It is justice to his character to say that he privately allowed Anet 50l. a-year to support him in prison, where he died. [This charge against the Archbishop also made by Walpole elsewhere, has been repeatedly refuted. It appears to rest on the very slender foundation of a foolish story told by some superannuated companion of Secker’s at Leyden, where the latter, in the fulness of his passion for metaphysics, probably indulged in paradoxes by way of argumentative exercises, which it would be very unjust to regard as his real opinion. Bishop Watson, when a student at Trinity, wrote a paper to refute Clarke’s main argument to prove the existence of God, yet no one ever thought of calling him an atheist.—E.]