Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/122

110 church and state of England, that they choked and overtopped the genuine grain. King James the second had given a liberty of conscience in general. This, as it was shocking to the established church, was exchanged, by the prevalence of calvinistical and freethinking interlopers, for the softer title of toleration, which has been improved, by a very easy turn of lergerdemain into actual dominion. A great cry was kept up on all sides, about the dangers that threatened the church. The unthinking tories, or church of England men, joined in it along with the whigs, with a view of keeping out popery. The whigs heightened it at every turn, not to keep out popery, which they made use of as a bugbear, but to oblige the church to suppress her true doctrine and discipline, and let in presbytery. The tories were all along the dupes of this farce, and king William, with all his penetration, could not see through the whole plot, or did not go all the lengths he should to favour the whigs, and thereby secure his own independency on the people. He had a very uneasy time of it, while he laboured in vain to mix parties that never can incorporate. The whig will never become tory: the tory, generally speaking, is not so stubborn. It is true, he never will expose his life or his fortune, by rising to the sublime pitch of a cavalier, which renders any government secure against him. He may drink, and prate, and protest, to get a name among the vulgar; but Clarendon's usage of the loyalists after the restoration is a sufficient warning to him to keep his own house, and live within the verge of the laws in being. However, as he will not play the fool for church or state, he is extremely wise in regard of himself. Loyalty and religion