Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/85

N° 22. could have bound their tongues too. But, as fast as their hands were bound, they could make a shift to hold their pens, and have their share in the guilt of ruining the hopefullest party and ministry, that ever prescribed to a crown. This captious gentleman is angry to see a majority of prelates cried up by those, who are enemies to the character: now I always thought, that the concessions of enemies, were more to a man's advantage, than the praise of his friends. Time and mortality, he says, can only remedy these inconveniencies in the church: that is, in other words, when certain bishops are dead, we shall have others of our own stamp. Not so fast; you are not yet so sure of your game. We have already got one comfortable loss in Spain, although by a general of our own: for joy of which, our junto had a merry meeting at the house of their great proselyte, on the very day we received the happy news. One or two more such blows would perhaps set us right again; and then we, can employ mortality as well as others. He concludes with wishing, that three letters, spoken when the prolocutor was presented, were made publick. I suppose he would be content with one; and that is more than we shall humour him to grant. However, I hope he will allow it possible to have grace, without either eloquence or Latin; which is all I shall say to this malicious innuendo.

Having thus, I hope, given a full and satisfactory answer to the Examiner's last paper, I shall now go on to a more important affair, which is, to prove by several undeniable instances, that the late ministry and their abettors were true friends to the church. It is yet, I confess, a secret to the clergy wherein this