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be to God for the inestimable gift of eternal life , through Jesus Christ !
In March, 1782, Soame Jenyns published his Disquisitions onVarious Subjects. The seventh disquisition was wholly oppositeto the principles of government which I had maintained in thesermon intitled, The Principles of the Revolution Vindicated;and that sermon was evidently glanced at in some parts of theDisquisition. This Toryism vexed me, and though I was very illat the time, I instantly wrote an answer to it. I did not getMr. Jenyns ’s book till Thursday in the afternoon, and I sent offthe answer to it, to be printed in London , on the evening of thenext day, under the title of, An Answer to the Disquisition onGovernment, in a letter to the author of Disquisitions on SeveralSubjects.
I had severity enough in my disposition, had I indulged it, tohave written bitter replies to whatever was published against me;but partly from the pride of conscious political innocence, andpartly from a principle of Christian forbearance, I took no noticeof the senseless malignity of any of them.
On the 25th of March, 1782, a total change of ministry tookplace. I happened then to be in London , and had the honour ofdinino- with Lord Rockingham on that day. When we were aloneafter dinner, he save me an account of the manner in which thechange of administration had been effected; and he read to methe several propositions to which he required the King’s explicitconsent, before he would accept the office of First Lord of the