Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/217

N° 39. , I cannot readily tell, and would be glad to hear: however, those important words having, by dextrous management, been found of mighty service to their cause, although applied with little colour either of reason or justice; I have been considering, whether they may not be adapted to more proper objects.

As to popery, which is the first of these; to deal plainly, I can hardly think there is any set of men among us, except the professors of it, who have any direct intention to introduce it here; but the question is, whether the principles and practices of us, or the whigs, be most likely to make way for it? It is allowed on all hands, that among the methods concerted at Rome, for bringing over England into the bosom of the catholick church, one of the chief was to send jesuits, and other emissaries, in lay habits; who, personating tradesmen and mechanicks, should mix with the people, and under the pretence of a farther and purer reformation, endeavour to divide us into as many sects as possible; which would either put us under the necessity of returning to our old errours, to preserve peace at home; or, by our divisions, make way for some powerful neighbour, with the assistance of the pope's permission, and a consecrated banner, to convert and enslave us at once. If this has been reckoned good politicks, (and it was the best the jesuit schools could invent) I appeal to any man, whether the whigs, for many years past, have not been employed in the very same work? They professed on all occasions, that they knew no reason why any one system of speculative opinions (as they term the doctrines of the church) should be established by law, more than another; or. III.