Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/84

76, to call those who are hired to teach the religion of the magistrate, by the name of the church. But this is not all; for in the very next line he says, it was hoped the nation would have followed this example. You see the faction begins already to speak out: this is an open demand for the abbey-lands; this furious zealot would have us priestridden again, like our popish ancestors; but it is to be hoped the government will take timely care to suppress such audacious attempts; else we have spent so much blood and treasure, to very little purpose, in maintaining religion and the revolution. But what can we expect from a man, who at one blow endeavours to ruin our trade? A country, says he, may flourish (these are his own words) without being the common receptacle for all nations, religions, and languages. What! we must immediately banish, or murder the Palatines; forbid all foreign merchants not only the Exchange but the kingdom; persecute the dissenters with fire and faggot; and make it high treason to speak any other tongue but English. In another place he talks of a serpent with seven heads, which is a manifest corruption of the text; for the words, seven heads, are not mentioned in that verse. However, we know what serpent he would mean; a serpent with fourteen legs; or indeed no serpent at all, but seven great men, who were the best ministers, the truest protestants, and the most disinterested patriots, that ever served a prince. But nothing is so inconsistent as this writer. I know not whether to call him a whig or a tory, a protestant or a papist; he finds fault with convocations; says, they are assemblies strangely contrived; and yet lays the fault upon us, that we bound their hands: I wish we could