Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/447

Rh hand, to provide them with materials? what other subject through all art or nature, could have produced Tindal for a profound author, or furnished him with readers? it is the wise choice of the subject, that alone adorns and distinguishes the writer. For, had a hundred such pens as these been employed on the side of religion, they would have immediately sunk into silence and oblivion.

Nor do I think it wholly groundless, or my fears altogether imaginary, that the abolishing christianity may perhaps bring the church into danger, or at least put the senate to the trouble of another securing vote. I desire I may not be mistaken; I am far from presuming to affirm, or think, that the church is in danger at present, or as things now stand; but we know not how soon it may be so, when the christian religion is repealed. As plausible as this project seems, there may be a dangerous design lurking under it. Nothing can be more notorious, than that the atheists, deists, socinians, antitrinitarians, and other subdivisions of freethinkers, are persons of little zeal for the present ecclesiastical establishment: their declared opinion is for repealing the sacramental test; they are very indifferent with regard to ceremonies; nor do they hold the jus divinum of episcopacy: therefore this may be intended as one politick step toward altering the constitution of the church established, and setting up presbytery in the stead, which I leave to be farther considered by those at the helm.

In the last place, think nothing can be more plain, than that by this expedient, we shall run into the evil we chiefly pretend to avoid: and that the abolishment of the christian religion, will be the readiest