Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/129

Rh cannot agree. The most sanguine Jesuits, though they are forced to keep some measures, are horribly cried out at by those that pretend to the strictest kind of reformation: yet these, whenever they get the temporal power into their hands, outdo them infinitely in all their arts of double dealing and tyranny. But all our jars are a noise about nothing Clarendon, a man of much more religion and sense than either the apostles, fathers, or councils, has discovered, of late, that heresy is only a dream; since, according to him, catholick and christian are one and the same thing in fact. So let us burn our books and our schools, for there is an end of controversy. However, let us keep rancour and persecution on foot, with all the zeal of our fathers. There has been, and there is still, something to be got by it.

I own I am a little mad; so Mentor must take nothing ill that I say to him. My patience is exhausted, and I have done all I could to tire his. He must blame his own good nature, that has given me room to vent my spleen. As I have no friend here of genius or freedom of thought enough to comprehend these notions, they had rotted in my breast, and thrown me, perhaps, into some dangerous indisposition, if I had not come out with them. I am now setting out upon an expedition against the Moors, since the modern christians are too hard for me; and whatever may be my fate, it is an exceeding comfort to me to have thus discharged my conscience in regard of these, before I enter the lists against their brethren the mahometans.

As for the blank verses which I recommended so earnestly to the care of Mentor, I now abandon them to his discretion. If he thinks them worth his Rh