Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/87

Rh disgrace of Christianity, and the perpetual infamy of the English nation.

When we accuse the papists of the horrid doctrine, "that no faith ought to be kept with hereticks;" they deny it to a man: and yet we justly think it dangerous to trust them, because we know their actions have been sometimes suitable to that opinion. But the followers of those who beheaded the martyr, have not yet renounced their principles; and till they do, they may be justly suspected; neither will the bare name of protestants set them right: for, surely, Christ requires more from us than a profession of hating popery, which a Turk or an atheist may do as well as a protestant.

If an enslaved people should recover their liberty, from a tyrannical power of any sort, who could blame them for commemorating their deliverance by a day of joy and thanksgiving? And doth not the destruction of a church, a king, and three kingdoms, by the artifices, hypocrisy, and cruelty, of a wicked race of soldiers and preachers, and other sons of Belial, equally require a solemn time of humiliation; especially since the consequences of that bloody scene still continue, as I have already shown, in their effects upon us?

Thus I have done with the three heads I proposed to discourse on. But, before I conclude, I must give a caution to those who hear me, that they may not think I am pleading for absolute unlimited power in any one man. It is true, all power is from God: and, as the apostle says, "The powers that be are ordained of God;" but this is in the same sense that all we have is from God, our food and raiment, and whatever possession we hold by lawful means. Nothing can be meant in those or any other words of Scripture,