Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/205

Rh, they are perfect nonsense and blunder: to speak in his own borrowed phrase, what is contained in the idea of established? Surely, not existence. Does establishment give being to a thing? He might have said the same thing of Christianity in general, or the existence of God, since both are confirmed by acts of parliament. But, the best is behind: for, in the next line, having named the church half a dozen times before, he now says, he means only the polity and discipline of it: as if, having spoken in praise of the art of physick, a man should explain himself, that he meant only the institution of a college of physicians into a president and fellows. And it will appear, that this author, however versed in the practice, has grossly transgressed the rules of nonsense (whose property it is neither to affirm nor deny) since every visible assertion gathered from those few lines is absolutely false: for, where was the necessity of excepting the doctrines expressed in the articles, since these are equally creatures of the civil power, having been established by acts of parliament as well as the others? But, the church of England is no creature of the civil power, either as to its polity, or doctrines. The fundamentals of both were deduced from Christ and his apostles, and the instructions of the purest and earliest ages; and were received as such by those princes or states who embraced Christianity, whatever prudential additions have been made to the former by human laws, which alone can be justly altered or annulled by them.

What I have already said would, I think, be a sufficient answer to his whole preface, and indeed to the greatest part of his book, which is wholly turned Rh