Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/232

224 Page 226. "Could they, like the popish priests, add to this a restraint on the press, their business would be done." So it ought: For example, to hinder his book, because it is written to justify the vices and infidelity of the age. There can be no other design in it. For, is this a way or manner to do good? railing does but provoke. The opinion of the whole parliament is, the clergy are too poor.

Ibid. "When some nations could be no longer kept from prying into learning, this miserable gibberish of the schools was contrived." We have exploded schoolmen as much as he, and in some people's opinion too much, since the liberty of embracing any opinion is allowed; they following Aristotle, who is doubtless the greatest master of arguing in the world: But it has been a fashion of late years to explode Aristotle, and therefore this man has fallen into it like others, for that reason, without understanding him. Aristotle's poetry, rhetorick, and politicks, are admirable; and therefore, it is likely, so are his logicks.

Page 220. "In these freer countries, as the clergy have less power, so religion is better understood, and more useful and excellent discourses are made on that subject, &c." Not generally. Holland not very famous, Spain has been, and France is. But it requires more knowledge than his, to form general rules, which people strain (when ignorant) to false deductions to make them out.

Page 232. Chap. VII. That this hypothesis of an independent power in any set of clergymen, makes ail reformation unlawful, except where those who