Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/412

360 invectives, only tax the church with an insatiable desire of power and wealth, (equally common to all bodies of men, as well as individuals) but thank God, that the laws have deprived them of both. However, it is worth observing the justice of parties; the sects among us are apt to complain, and think it hard usage to be reproached now after fifty years, for overturning the state, for the murder of a king, and the indignity of a usurpation; yet these very men, and their partisans, are continually reproaching the clergy, and laying to their charge, the pride, the avarice, the luxury, the ignorance, and superstition of popish times, for a thousand years past.

He thinks it a scandal to government, that such an unlimited liberty should be allowed, of publishing books against those doctrines in religion, wherein all christians have agreed; much more, to connive at such tracts as reject all revelation, and, by their consequences, often deny the very being of a God. Surely it is not a sufficient atonement for the writers, that they profess much loyalty to the present government, and sprinkle up and down some arguments in favour of the dissenters; that they dispute, as strenuously as they can, for liberty of conscience, and inveigh largely against all ecclesiasticks under the name of high church; and, in short, under the shelter of some popular principles in politicks and religion, undermine the foundations of all piety and virtue.

As he does not reckon every schism, of that damnable nature which some would represent, so he is very far from closing with the new opinion of those, who would make it no crime at all; and argue