Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/211

Rh, will not allow it them. Now, without examining what divine right the clergy have, or how far it extends; is it any sort of proof that I have no right, because a stronger power will not let me exercise it? or, does all that this author says through his preface, or book itself, offer any other sort of argument but this, or what he deduces the same way?

But his arguments and definitions are yet more supportable, than the grossness of historical remarks, which are scattered so plentifully in his book, that it would be tedious to enumerate, or to show the fraud and ignorance of them. I beg the reader's leave to take notice of one here just in my way; and the rather, because I design for the future to let hundreds of them pass without farther notice. "When," says he, p. x, "by the abolishing of the pope's power, things were brought back to their ancient channel, the parliament's right in making ecclesiastical laws revived of course." What can possibly be meant by this "ancient channel?" Why, the channel that things ran in before the pope had any power in England: that is to say, before Austin the monk converted England; before which time, it seems, the parliament had a right to make ecclesiastical laws. And what parliament could this be? Why the lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons, met at Westminster.

I cannot here forbear reproving the folly and pedantry of some lawyers, whose opinions this poor creature blindly follows, and renders yet more absurd by his comments. The knowledge of our constitution can be only attained by consulting the earliest English histories, of which those gentlemen seem