Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/188

180 judge which of these two parties a prince has most to fear; and whether her majesty did not consider the ease, the safety, and dignity of her person, the security of her crown, and the transmission of monarchy to her protestant successors, when she put her affairs into the present hands.

Suppose the matter were now entire; the queen to make her choice; and for that end should order the principles on both sides to be fairly laid before her. First, I conceive the whigs would grant, that they have naturally no very great veneration for crowned heads; that they allow the person of the prince may, upon many occasions, be resisted by arms; and they do not condemn the war raised against king Charles the first, or own it to be a rebellion, although they would be thought to blame his murder. They do not think the prerogative to be yet sufficiently limited; and have therefore taken care (as a particular mark of their veneration for the illustrious house of Hanover) to clip it still closer against the next reign; which, consequently, they would be glad to see done in the present: not to mention, that the majority of them, if it were put to the vote, would allow that they prefer a commonwealth before a monarchy. As to religion; their universal undisputed maxim is, that it ought to make no distinction at all among protestants; and in the word protestant, they include every body who is not a papist, and who will by an oath give security to the government. Union in discipline and doctrine, the offensive sin of schism, the notion of a church and a hierachy, they laugh at, as foppery, cant, and priestcraft. They see no necessity at all that there should be a national faith; and what we usually