Asgill, John

Asgill, John, member of the Irish Parliament, and author of an eccentric book entitled An Argument proving that, according to the Covenant of eternal Life revealed in the Scriptures, Man may be translated hence into that eternal Life without passing through Death, although the humane Nature of Christ himself could not thus be translated till he had passed through Death (Dublin, 1698, 8vo). The Irish Parliament voted it a blasphemous libel, and expelled Asgill from the House after four days. In 1705 he entered the English Parliament as member for Bramber, in Sussex. But the English Hoauge, resolving to be not less virtuous than the Irish, condemned his bock to be burnt by the common hangman as profane and blasphemous, and expelled Asgill on the 18th December, 1707. After this his circumstances rapidly grew worse, until at last he found something like peace in the King's Bench and the Fleet, between which two places his excursions were confined for the term of his natural life. He died in Nosvember, 1738. See Southey, The Doctor, pt. ii; Coleridge, Works (Harpers' ed.), vol. v; Allibone, i, 73.