Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/70

56 was it, that some of them have not been pressed more closely upon that head, or rather have been left to do as they please? It is no matter how hard a bargain people pretend to make, if they are not tied to the performance.

P. 75. "If the enemy are stronger than they were," how are we so near our great hopes, the promised land? The affectation of eloquence, which carries the doctor away by a tide of words, makes him contradict himself, and betray his own argument. Yet, by all those expressions, p. 75, we can only find, that whatever success we have, must be miraculous; he says, "we must trust to miracles for our success," which, as I take it, is to tempt God: though, p. 77, he thinks, "the most fearful cannot doubt of God's continuance." We have had miraculous success this nine years by his own account; and this year, he owns, "we should have been all undone, without a new miracle; black clouds, &c. hanging over our heads." And why may not our sins provoke God to forsake us, and bring the black clouds again? greater sins than our inconstancy! avarice, ambition, disloyalty, corruption, pride, drunkenness, gaming, profaneness, blasphemy, ignorance, and all other immoralities and irreligion! These are certainly much greater sins; and, whether found in a court or in a camp, much likelier to provoke God's anger, than inconstancy.

Ibid. "If we have not patience to wait till he has finished, by gradual steps, this great work, in such a manner as he in his infinite wisdom shall think fit." I desire the doctor would explain himself upon the business of gradual steps, whether three and twenty years longer will do, or what time he thinks the