Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/192

184 whatsoever. The priests dispute about explaining the Trinity; therefore a freethinker may reject one or two, or the whole three persons; at least, he may reject Christianity, because the Trinity is the most fundamental doctrine of that religion. So I affirm original sin, and that men are now liable to be damned for Adam's sin, to be the foundation of the whole Christian religion; but this point was formerly, and is now, disputed: therefore a freethinker may deny the whole. And I cannot help giving you one farther direction, how I insinuate all along, that the wisest freethinking priests, whom you may distinguish by the epithets I bestow on them, were those who differed most from the generality of their brethren.

But, besides, the conduct of pur priests in many other points makes freethinking unavoidable; for, some of them own, that the doctrines of the church are contradictory to one another, as well as to reason; which I thus prove: Dr. Sacheverell says, in his speech at his trial, "That, by abandoning passive obedience, we must render ourselves the most inconsistent church in the world;" ergo, there must have been a great many inconsistencies and contradictory doctrines in the church before. Dr. South describes the incarnation of Christ as an astonishing mystery, impossible to be conceived by man's reason; ergo, it is contradictory to itself, and to reason, and ought to be exploded by all freethinkers.

Another instance of the priests' conduct, which multiplies freethinkers, is their acknowledgment of abuses, defects, and false doctrines, in the church; particularly that of eating black pudding, which is so plainly forbid in the Old and New Testament, that I wonder those who pretend to believe a syllable in either