Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/209

Rh will grow too big to get back into her hole, and the like, can be no more than advice; therefore, we must find out some way of punishing her, which has more inconveniencies than she will ever suffer by the mere eating of cheese." After this, who is so slow of understanding, as not to have in his mind a full and complete idea of a mouse-trap? Well. — The Freethinkers may talk what they please of pedantry, and cant, and jargon of schoolmen, and insignificant terms in the writings of the clergy, if ever the most perplexed and perplexing follower of Aristotle, from Scotus to Suarez, could be a match for this author!

But the strength of his arguments is equal to the clearness of his definitions. For, having most ignorantly divided government into three parts, whereof the first contains the other two; he attempts to prove that the clergy possess none of these by a divine right. And he argues thus, p. vii. "As to a legislative power, if that belongs to the clergy by divine right, it must be when they are assembled in convocation: but the 25th Hen. VIII, c. 19, is a bar to any such divine right, because that act makes it no less than a præmunire for them, so much as to meet without the king's writ, &c." So that the force of his argument lies here; if the clergy had a divine right, it is taken away by 25th of Henry the Eighth. And as ridiculous as this argument is, the preface and book are founded upon it.

Another argument against the legislative power in the clergy of England is, p. viii, that Tacitus tells us; that in great affairs, the Germans consulted the whole body of the people: "Da minoribus rebus principes consultant, de majoribus omnes: Ita men,