Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/200

192, and heathen religion. In short, they may do any thing within the compass of human power. And therefore, who will dispute that the same law, which deprived the church not only of lands, misapplied to superstitious uses, but even the tithes and glebes (the ancient and necessary support of parish priests) may take away all the rest, whenever the lawgivers please, and make the priesthood as primitive, as this writer, or others of his stamp, can desire?

But as the supreme power can certainly do ten thousand things more than it ought, so there are several things which some people may think it can do, although it really cannot. For it unfortunately happens, that edicts which cannot be executed will not alter the nature of things. So, if a king and parliament should please to enact, that a woman who has been a month married is virgo intacta, would that actually restore her to her primitive state? If the supreme power should resolve a corporal of dragoons to be a doctor of divinity, law, or physick, few, I believe, would trust their souls, fortunes, or bodies, to his direction; because that power is neither fit to judge or teach those qualifications which are absolutely necessary to the several professions. Put the case, that walking on the slack rope were the only talent required by an act of parliament for making a man a bishop; no doubt, when a man had done his feat of activity in form, he might sit in the house of lords, put on his robes and his rochet, go down to his palace, receive and spend his rents; but it requires very little Christianity to believe this tumbler to be one whit more a bishop than he was before, because the law of God has otherwise decreed; which law, although a nation may refuse to receive, it cannot alter in its own nature. And