Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/81

Rh from sending any supplies to his protestant subjects here; and therefore, we may truly say that the English parliament held the king's hands, while the Irish papists here were cutting our grandfathers throats.

Secondly, That murderous puritan parliament, when they had all in their own power, could not agree upon any one method of settling a form either of religion or civil government; but changed every day from schism to schism, from heresy to heresy, and from one faction to another: Whence arose that wild confusion still continuing in our several ways of serving God, and those absurd notions of civil power, which have so often torn us with factions, more than any other nation in Europe.

Thirdly, To this rebellion and murder have been owing the rise and progress of atheism among us. For men, observing what numberless villanies of all kinds were committed during twenty years, under pretence of zeal and the reformation of God's church, were easily tempted to doubt that all religion was a mere imposture: and the same spirit of infidelity, so far spread among us at this present, is nothing but the fruit of the seeds sown by those rebellious hypocritical saints.

Fourthly, The old virtue, and loyalty, and generous spirit of the English nation were wholly corrupted, by the power, the doctrine, and the example, of those wicked people. Many of the ancient nobility were killed, and their families extinct, in defence of their prince and country, or murdered by the merciless courts of justice. Some of the worst among them favoured or complied with the reigning iniquities; and not a few of the new set, created when the mar-