Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/84

76 much less to deposit it in their hands until they shall please to restore it.

Secondly, By bringing to mind the tragedy of this day, and the consequences that have arisen from it, we shall be convinced how necessary it is for those in power to curb in season all such unruly spirits as desire to introduce new doctrines and discipline in the church, or new forms of government in the state. Those wicked puritans began, in queen Elizabeth's time, to quarrel only with surplices and other habits, with the ring in matrimony, the cross in baptism, and the like; thence they went on to farther matters of higher importance; and at last, they must needs have the whole government of the church dissolved. This great work they compassed, first, by depriving the bishops of their seats in parliament: then they abolished the whole order; and at last, which was their original design, they seized on all the church lands, and divided the spoil among themselves, and, like Jeroboam, made priests of the very dregs of the people. This was their way of reforming the church. As to the civil government, you have already heard how they modelled it, upon the murder of their king, and discarding the nobility. Yet, clearly to show what a Babel they had built, after twelve years trial and twenty several sorts of government, the nation, grown weary of their tyranny, was forced to call in the son of him whom those reformers had sacrificed. And thus were Simeon and Levi divided in Jacob, and scattered in Israel.

Thirdly, Although the successors of these puritans, I mean our present dissenters, do not think fit to observe this day of humiliation; yet it would be very proper in them, upon some occasions, to renounce, in