Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/189

Rh ought to be at the charge of finding a sufficient number of these Scriptures, for every one of her majesty's subjects; for, there are twenty to one against us, that we may be in the wrong: but a great deal of freethinking will at last set us all right, and every one will adhere to the Scripture he likes best; by which means, religion, peace, and wealth, will be for ever secured in her majesty's realms.

And it is the more necessary that the good people of England should have liberty to choose some other Scripture, because all Christian priests differ so much about the copies of theirs, and about the various readings of the several manuscripts, which quite destroys the authority of the Bible: for what authority can a book pretend to, where there are various readings? And for this reason, it is manifest that no man can know the opinions of Aristotle or Plato, or believe the facts related by Thucydides or Livy, or be pleased with the poetry of Homer and Virgil, all which books are utterly useless, upon account of their various readings. Some books of Scripture are said to be lost, and this utterly destroys the credit of those that are left: some we reject, which the Africans and Copticks receive; and why may we not think freely, and reject the rest? Some think the Scriptures wholly inspired, some partly; and some not at all. Now this is just the very case of the bramins, Persees, bonzes, talapoins, dervises, rabbis, and all other priests, who build their religion upon books, as our priests do upon their Bibles. They all equally differ about the copies. Various readings and inspirations, of their several Scriptures; and God knows which are in the right: freethinking alone can determine it. Rh