"What an eventful period is this! I am _thankful_ that I have lived to it; I could almost say, _Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation_.--I have lived to see a _diffusion_ of knowledge which has undermined superstition and error.--I have lived to see _the rights of men_ better understood than ever, and nations panting for liberty which seemed to have lost the idea of it.--I have lived to see _thirty millions of people_, indignant and resolute, spurning at slavery, and demanding liberty with an irresistible voice; _their king led in triumph, and an arbitrary monarch surrendering himself to his subjects_."[88] Before I proceed further, I have to remark that Dr. Price seems rather to overvalue the great acquisitions of light which he has obtained and diffused in this age. The last century appears to me to have been quite as much enlightened. It had, though in a different place, a triumph as memorable as that of Dr. Price; and some of the great preachers of that period partook of it as eagerly as he has done in the triumph of France. On the trial of the Reverend Hugh Peters for high treason, it was deposed, that, when King Charles was brought to London for his trial, the Apostle of Liberty in that day conducted the _triumph_. "I saw," says the witness, "his Majesty in the coach with six horses, and Peters riding before the king _triumphing_." Dr. Price, when he talks as if he had made a discovery, only follows a precedent; for, after the commencement of the king's trial, this precursor, the same Dr. Peters, concluding a long prayer at the royal chapel at Whitehall, (he had very triumphantly chosen his place,) said, "I have prayed and preached these twenty years; and now I may say with old Simeon, _Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation_."[89] Peters had not the fruits of his prayer; for he neither departed so soon as he wished, nor in peace. He became (what I heartily hope none of his followers may be in this country) himself a sacrifice to the triumph which he led as pontiff. They dealt at the Restoration, perhaps, too hardly with this poor good man. But we owe it to his memory and his sufferings, that he had as much illumination and as much zeal, and had as effectually undermined all _the superstition and error_ which might impede the great business he was engaged in, as any who follow and repeat after him in this age, which would assume to itself an exclusive title to the knowledge of the rights of men, and all the glorious consequences of that knowledge.