increases, and he is in the highest credit and intimacy with most of our clergy." The letter, accompanied with remarks by a person at Manchester, was also published in The Gentleman's Magazine. In the remarks the charges are denied, except that Dr. Deacon had once only passed by his son's head, on which occasion he had taken off his hat. The same writer very naturally asks what connexion there is between the Doctor's peculiar views and politics, specifying Infant Communion, and the restoration of the Usages: and, in allusion to the assertion of his intimacy with the Clergy, he admits, that the Doctor was esteemed and valued by that body. He closes his remarks with an expression of opinion, that it was less dangerous to associate with a Nonjuring Bishop, than with a Dissenter.[1]
Owen commented on the remarks in a letter addressed to the Gentleman's Magazine, affirming or rather insinuating his previous charges, and adding another, that Deacon had absolved Paul and Hall after the Rebellion in 1716.[2] This produced a second letter from the remarker, from which I give the following extract, containing a severe but just censure of the Dissenters of that day for the avidity with which they raised the cry of Popery. The remarker had charged a certain set of people with making use of a canting evasion: and Owen calls upon him to name them. He replies as follows: "I mean that tribe of sectaries who have for more than a century past shewn the utmost enmity and hatred to the Church of England, exemplified their hatred once by a total subversion of episcopal government, and again
