Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/296

288 in general, or only to those very few (hardly enough in case of a change, to supply the mortality of those self-denying prelates he celebrates) who are in his principles, and among these, only such as live in and about London; which probably will reduce the number to about half a dozen at most. I should incline to guess the latter; because he tells them they are surrounded by a learned, wealthy, knowing gentry, who know with what firmness, self-denial, and charity, the bishops adhered to the publick cause, and what contumelies those clergymen have undergone, &c. who adhered to the cause of truth. By those terms, the publick cause, and the cause of truth, he understands the cause of the whigs, in opposition to the queen and her servants: therefore by the learned, wealthy, and knowing gentry, he must understand the Bank and East-India company, and those other merchants or citizens within the bills of mortality, who have been strenuous against the church and crown, and whose spirit of faction has lately got the better of their interest. For let him search all the rest of the kingdom, he will find the surrounded clergy, and the surrounding gentry, wholly strangers to the merits of those prelates; and adhering to a very different cause of truth, as will soon, I hope, be manifest, by a fair appeal to the representatives of both.

It was very unnecessary in this writer to bespeak the treatment of contempt and derision, which the clergy are to expect from his faction, whenever they come into power. I believe that venerable body is in very little concern after what manner their most mortal enemies intend to treat them, whenever it shall