Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/409

Rh have recovered all again, and to have settled on their old foundation. Then I would put a query, whether that sect, which was the unhappy instrument of all this confusion, could reasonably expect to be intrusted for the future with the greatest employments, or indeed to be hardly tolerated among them?

To go on with the sentiments of a church of England man: he does not see how that mighty passion for the church, which some men pretend, can well consist with those indignities, and that contempt, they bestow on the persons of the clergy. It is a strange mark whereby to distinguish high church men, that they are such, who imagine the clergy can never be too low. He thinks the maxim these gentlemen are so fond of, that they are for an humble clergy, is a very good one: and so is he, and for an humble laity too, since humility is a virtue, that perhaps equally befits, and adorns, every station of life.

But then, if the scribblers on the other side freely speak the sentiments of their party, a divine of the church of England cannot look for much better quarter thence. You shall observe nothing more frequent in their weekly papers, than a way of affecting to confound the terms of clergy and high church, of applying both indifferently, and then loading the latter, with all the calumny they can invent. They will tell you, they honour a clergyman; but talk at the same time, as if there were not three in the kingdom, who could fall in with their definition. After the like manner they insult the universities, as poisoned fountains, and corrupters of youth. Rh