John Asgill, an eccentric writer, born at Hanley Castle, Worcestershire, in 1659, was called to the bar in 1692. Having got into difficulties, he sailed in 1699 for Ireland, where an act for the resumption of forfeited estates promised plenty of lawsuits. His talents gained him a lucrative practice; and in 1703 he obtained a seat in the Irish parliament. Three years before, however, he had published a paradoxical pamphlet, bepraised by Coleridge, to prove that by the rules of English law the redeemed need not die. Much to his own surprise, the Irish parliament voted this a blasphemous libel, and expelled its author from the House. In 1705 he returned to England, and entered the English parliament as member for Bramber, in Sussex. But the fame of his unlucky pamphlet haunted him; for the English House condemned it to be burned by the common hangman, and expelled Asgill in 1707. At last he found peace in the King’s Bench and the Fleet, where he died in November 1738.

General

  Asgill was an extraordinary man, and his pamphlet is invaluable. He undertook to prove that man is literally immortal; or rather, that any given living man might probably never die. He complains of the cowardly practice of dying. He was expelled from two Houses of Commons for blasphemy and atheism, as was pretended; I really suspect because he was a staunch Hanoverian. I expected to find the ravings of an enthusiast, or the sullen snarlings of an infidel; whereas I found the very soul of Swift—an intense half self-deceived humorism. I scarcely remember elsewhere such uncommon skill in logic, such lawyer-like acuteness, and yet such a grasp of common sense. Each of his paragraphs is in itself a whole, and yet a link between the preceding and following; so that the entire series forms one argument, and yet each is a diamond in itself.

  If it be true that he nearly attained the age of an hundred (as one statement represents), and with these happy faculties unimpaired, he may have been tempted to imagine that he was giving the best and only convincing proof of his own argument. Death undeceived him, and Time has done him justice at last. For though it stands recorded that he was expelled the House of Commons as being the Author of a Book in which are contained many profane and blasphemous expressions, highly reflecting upon the Christian Religion! nothing can be more certain than that this censure was undeserved, and that his expulsion upon that ground was as indefensible as it would have been becoming, if, in pursuance of the real motives by which the House was actuated, an Act had been passed disqualifying from that time forward any person in a state of insolvency from taking or retaining a seat there. In the year 1760 I find him mentioned as “the celebrated gentleman commonly called Translated Asgill.” His name is now seen only in catalogues, and his history known only to the curious.

  On the whole, Asgill does not deserve to be forgotten. His noble crochets, quaint puzzling paradoxes, and vivid faith; his wonderful luck and sang-froid, his absolute sincerity, his inability to bend to a compromise, his utter absence of worldly-mindedness, and his remarkable logical dexterity—these shadow him forth as a distinctive figure—that of a man we feel we should like to become better acquainted with. He is a strange compound in creed of what we should now style Swedenborgianism and of views held by those whom we should to-day call advanced Christians. To the latter section of thought would belong his faith in the Christian scheme only on the basis of its universality. With the former system he has much in common…. What appears to have greatly offended the orthodox of Asgill’s day is a certain jocularity of expression that is evidently natural to him. But the seriousness at the root of his nature is thorough, beyond a doubt; indeed, he gives us the impression of having a faith much like William Blake’s—so much a part of his nature, and so deeply rooted within it, that he was somewhat careless as to the form into which he cast it.

  Asgill’s seriousness in the pamphlet on death was doubted at the time. A German traveller in 1710 (Offenbach’s “Merkwürdige Reisen,” ii. 200) gives a report that it was written in answer to a lady’s challenge to show his skill in maintaining paradoxes. The book itself indicates no want of sincerity, though some ludicrous phrases were very unfairly wrested by the committee of the English House of Commons to colour the charge of blasphemy. It interprets the relations between God and man by the technical rules of English law. Death being the penalty imposed by Adam’s sin, and Christ having satisfied the law, death could no longer be legally inflicted, and all who claim their rights will be exempt. Asgill professes that, having claimed his discharge, he expects “to make his exit by way of translation.” The book is written in pithy detached sentences. Coleridge declares that there is no “genuine Saxon English” finer than Asgill’s; thinks his irony often finer than Swift’s; and calls him “a consummate artist in the statement of his case.” The praise seems excessive, though not groundless; but we may accept Coleridge’s conclusion that Asgill was a humorist who did not himself know how far he was serious. Full extracts may be found in Southey’s “Doctor.” In recent years Asgill found a disciple in a Mr. Tresham Gregg, an Irish clergyman, who republished the pamphlet with some introductory notes.