There was much
scribbling pro and con upon the occasion; and finding that, tho'
an elegant preacher, he was but a poor writer, I lent him my pen
and wrote for him two or three pamphlets, and one piece in the Gazette
of April, 1735. Those pamphlets, as is generally the case with
controversial writings, tho' eagerly read at the time, were soon
out of vogue, and I question whether a single copy of them now exists.
During the contest an unlucky occurrence hurt his cause exceedingly.
One of our adversaries having heard him preach a sermon that was
much admired, thought he had somewhere read the sermon before,
or at least a part of it. On search he found that part quoted
at length, in one of the British Reviews, from a discourse
of Dr. Foster's. This detection gave many of our party disgust,
who accordingly abandoned his cause, and occasion'd our more speedy
discomfiture in the synod. I stuck by him, however, as I rather
approv'd his giving us good sermons compos'd by others, than bad
ones of his own manufacture, tho' the latter was the practice
of our common teachers. He afterward acknowledg'd to me that none
of those he preach'd were his own; adding, that his memory was such
as enabled him to retain and repeat any sermon after one reading only.
On our defeat, he left us in search elsewhere of better fortune,
and I quitted the congregation, never joining it after, tho' I continu'd
many years my subscription for the support of its ministers.
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