[128] A second instance of the same kind of complaisance from the Bishops appeared in May, 1753. Lord Bath had brought in a Bill to prevent clandestine marriages, which being very exceptionable, a new one was ordered to be brought in by the Judges, and was accordingly drawn up and warmly patronized by the Chancellor, and as warmly, though ineffectually, opposed by the Duke of Bedford; the whole Episcopal Bench consenting to the Act, though there were several clauses which enjoined dissolution of marriage for temporal reasons. In the House of Commons it was opposed by Fox and Nugent; on the other hand, the Attorney-General, who had been bred a Presbyterian, supported it, and applauded the conduct of the Bishops, _who_, he said, _had at last reduced Christianity to common sense_. This sentence occasioning great astonishment, he softened it by adding, that he only meant that the Bishops had at last consented to remove a superstructure, raised on the foundation of the Gospel, which Christ and the Apostles had never projected, it being only intended by the New Testament that marriages contracted under the laws of the country should be indissoluble; and that it was nowhere said that even the intervention of a priest was essential to the validity of matrimony. [129] Dr. Conyers Middleton, author of the Life of Cicero, of the Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers, of an Examination of the Bishop of London’s Letters on the Use and Intent of Prophecy, and of several other celebrated works. Much was written against him--nothing well; yet the University of Oxford bestowed the degree of Doctor on two of his opponents. He died July 28, 1750; and it was obvious how much personal prejudice had influenced his antagonists, for after his death some tracts, which he had held too offensive for publication, and much stronger against Christianity than any of those he had published, were printed--and nobody wrote against them! [130] Dr. Thomas Herring, Archbishop of Canterbury. He died March 13, 1757. [131] He died, after an illness of two hours, at his palace in Chelsea, April 17, 1761. What is here said of his being superannuated relates to the infirmities of his body, not of his mind, he retaining his senses perfectly to the last. [132] Dr. Butler, author of the Divine Analogy, &c. He died in June, 1752. [133] William Murray, brother to Lord Stormont, and to the titular Earl of Dunbar, the Pretender’s first Minister. Pope’s Imitation of _Nil Admirari_ is addressed to him. He was made Solicitor-General soon after Sir Robert Walpole’s resignation. CHAPTER VI.