Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/191

Rh he is likely to have few proselytes, beside those, who, from a sense of their vitious lives, require to be perpetually supplied by such amusements as this; which serve to flatter their wishes, and debase their understandings.

I know there are some who would fain have it, that this discourse was written by a club of freethinkers, among whom the supposed author only came in for a share. But, sure, we cannot judge so meanly of any party, without affronting the dignity of mankind. If this be so, and if here be the product of all their quotas and contributions, we must needs allow, that freethinking is a most confined and limited talent. It is true indeed, the whole discourse seems to be a motley, inconsistent composition, made up of various shreds of equal fineness, although of different colours. It is a bundle of incoherent maxims and assertions, that frequently destroy one another. But still there is the same flatness of thought and style; the same weak advances toward wit and raillery; the same petulancy and pertness of spirit; the same train of superficial reading; the same threadbare quotation; the same affectation of forming general rules upon false and scanty premises. And lastly, the same vapid venom sprinkled over the whole; which, like the dying impotent bite of a trodden benumbed snake, may be nauseous and offensive, but cannot be very dangerous.

And indeed, I am so far from thinking this libel to be born of several fathers, that it has been the wonder of several others, as well as myself, how it was possible for any man, who appears to have gone the common circle of academical education; who has taken so universal a hberty, and has so entirely laid Rh