"The sixth time I differed with them, was when the old whigs fell out with the modern whigs; and when the duke of Marlborough and my lord Godolphin were used by the Observator in a manner worse, I confess, for the time it lasted, than ever they were used since; nay, though it were by Abel and the Examiner. But the success failed. In this dispute my lord Godolphin did me the honour to tell me I had served him and his grace also, both faithfully and successfully. But his lordship is dead, and I have now no testimony of it, but what is to be found in the Observator, where I am plentifully abused for being an enemy to my country, by acting in the interest of my lord Godolphin and the duke of Marlborough. What weathercock can turn with such tempers as these? "I am now in the seventh breach with them, and my crime now is, that I will not believe and say the same things of the queen and the late treasurer, which I could not believe before of my lord Godolphin and the duke of Marlborough, and which in truth I cannot believe, and therefore could not say it of either of them; and which, if I had believed, yet I ought not to have been the man that should have said it, for the reasons aforesaid. "In such turns of tempers and times a man must have been tenfold a Vicar of Bray, or it is impossible but he must one time or other be out with everybody. This is my present condition; and for this I am reviled with having abandoned my principles, turned jacobite, and what not: God judge between me and these men! Would they come to any particulars with me, what real guilt I may have, I would freely acknowledge; and if they would produce any evidence of the bribes, the pensions, and the rewards I have taken, I would declare honestly whether they were true or no. If they would give a list of the books which they charge me with, and the reasons why they lay them at my door, I would acknowledge any mistake, own what I have done, and let them know what I have not done. But these men neither show mercy, nor leave room for repentance; in which they act not only unlike their Maker, but contrary to his express commands[77]."