Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/198

190 To expostulate, therefore, with this author for doing mischief to religion, is to strew his bed with roses; he will reply in triumph, that this was his design; and I am loth to mortify him, by asserting he has done none at all. For I never yet saw so poor an atheistical scribble, which would not serve as a twig for sinking libertines to catch at. It must be allowed in their behalf, that the faith of Christians is not as a grain of mustard seed in comparison of theirs, which can remove such mountains of absurdities, and submit with so entire a resignation to such apostles. If these men had any share of that reason they pretend to, they would retire into Christianity, merely to give it ease. And therefore men can never be confirmed in such doctrines, until they are confirmed in their vices; which last, as we have already observed, is the principal design of this, and all other writers, against revealed religion.

I am now opening the book which I propose to examine; an employment, as it is entirely new to me, so it is that to which, of all others, I have naturally the greatest antipathy. And indeed, who can dwell upon a tedious piece of insipid thinking, and false reasoning, so long as I am likely to do, without sharing the infection?

But, before I plunge into the depths of the book itself, I must be forced to wade through the shallows of a long preface.

This preface, large as we see it, is only made up of such supernumerary arguments against an independent power in the church, as he could not, without nauseous repetition, scatter into the body of his book: and it is detached, like a forlorn hope, to blunt the enemy's sword that intends to attack him. Now, I think,