Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/203

Rh shows that Cato understood the whole mystery of the Roman "religion as by law established." I beg you, sir, not to overlook these last words, "religion as by law established." I translate haruspex into the general word, priest. Thus I apply the sentence to our priests in England; and, when Dr. Smallridge sees Dr. Atterbury, I wonder how either of them can forbear laughing at the cheat they put upon the people, by making them believe their "religion as by law established."

Cicero, that consummate philosopher and noble patriot, though he was a priest, and consequently more likely to be a knave, gave the greatest proofs of his freethinking. First, he professed the sceptick philosophy, which doubts of every thing. Then, he wrote two treatises; in the first, he shows the weakness of the stoicks arguments for the being of the Gods: in the latter he has destroyed the whole revealed religion of the Greeks and Romans; for why should not theirs be a revealed religion as well as that of Christ? Cicero likewise tells us, as his own opinion, that they who study philosophy do not believe there are any Gods: he denies the immortality of the soul, and says, there can be nothing after death.

And because the priests have the impudence to quote Cicero, in their pulpits and pamphlets, against freethinking; I am resolved to disarm them of his authority. You must know, his philosophical works are generally in dialogues, where people are brought in disputing against one another. Now the priests, when they see an argument to prove a God, offered perhaps by a stoick, are such knaves or blockheads, to quote it as if it were Cicero's own: whereas Rh