Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/196

188 enemies have been often bribed to silence with money or preferment: And therefore to show how formidable he is, he has published his first essay; and in hopes of hire to be quiet, has frighted us with his design of another. What must the clergy do in these unhappy circumstances? If they should bestow this man bread enough to stop his mouth, it will but open those of a hundred more, who are every whit as well qualified to rail as he. And truly, when I compare the former enemies to Christianity, such as Socinus, Hobbes, and Spinosa, with such of their successors, as Toland, Asgil, Coward, Gildon, this author of the Rights, and some others; the church appears to me like the sick old lion in the fable, who, after having his person outraged by the bull, the elephant, the horse, and the bear, took nothing so much to heart as to find himself at last insulted by the spurn of an ass.

I will now add a few words, to give the reader some general notion of the nature and tendency of the work itself.

I think I may assert, without the least partiality, that it is a treatise wholly devoid of wit or learning, under the most violent and weak endeavours and pretences to both. That it is replenished throughout with bold, rude, improbable falsehoods, and gross misinterpretations; and supported by the most impudent sophistry, and false logick, I have any where observed. To this he has added a paltry, traditional cant of priestrid and priestcraft, without reason or pretext as he applies it. And when he rails at those doctrines in popery (which no protestant was ever supposed to believe) he leads the reader, however, by the hand, to make applications against the English clergy;