Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/202

194 this matter. Yet to see a large swelling volume written only to encounter this doctrine, what could one think less, than that the whole body of the clergy were perpetually tiring the press and the pulpit with nothing else?

I remember some years ago a virtuoso writ a small tract about worms, proved them to be in more places than was generally observed, and made some discoveries by glasses. This having met with some reception, presently the poor man's head was full of nothing but worms; all we eat and drink, all the whole consistence of human bodies, and those of every other animal, the very air we breathed, in short, all nature throughout was nothing but worms: and, by that system, he solved all difficulties, and from thence all causes in phlilosophyphilosophy [sic]. Thus it has fared with our author, and his independent power. The attack against occasional conformity, the scarcity of coffee, the invasion of Scotland, the loss of kerseys and narrow cloths, the death of king William, the author's turning papist for preferment, the loss of the battle of Almanza, with ten thousand other misfortunes, are all owing to this imperium in imperio.

It will be therefore necessary to set this matter in a clear light, by inquiring whether the clergy have any power independent of the civil, and of what nature it is.

Whenever the Christian religion was embraced by the civil power in any nation, there is no doubt but the magistrates and senates were fully instructed in the rudiments of it. Besides, the Christians were so numerous, and their worship so open before the conversion of princes, that their discipline, as well as doctrine,