Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/410

358 Now it seems clear to me, that the whigs might easily have procured, and maintained a majority among the clergy, and perhaps in the universities, if they had not too much encouraged, or connived at, this intemperance of speech and virulence of pen, in the worst and most prostitute of their party; among whom there has been, for some years past, such a perpetual clamour against the ambition, the implacable temper, and the covetousness of the priesthood; such a cant of high church, and persecution, and being priestridden, so many reproaches about narrow principles, or terms of communion; then such scandalous reflections on the universities, for infecting the youth of the nation with arbitrary and jacobite principles, that it was natural for those, who had the care of religion and education, to apprehend some general design of altering the constitution of both. And all this was the more extraordinary, because it could not easily be forgot, that whatever opposition was made to the usurpations of king James, proceeded altogether from the church of England, and chiefly from the clergy, and one of the universities. For, if it were of any use to recall matters of fact, what is more notorious, than that prince's applying himself first to the church of England? and upon their refusal to fall in with his measures, making the like advances to the dissenters of all kinds, who readily and almost universally complied with him, affecting, in their numerous addresses and pamphlets, the style of our brethren the Roman catholicks; whose interests they put on the same foot with their own: and some of Cromwell's officers, took posts in the army raised against the prince of Orange. These proceedings of theirs they