Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 4.djvu/394

386 something else could invent: and which I will no more believe than five hundred passages in a certain book of travels. See the character he gives of a divine and a scholar, who shortened his life in the service of God and the church. ''Mr. Wharton desired me to intercede with Tillotson for a prebend of Canterbury. I did so, but Wharton would not believe it; said he would be revenged, and so writ against me. Soon after, he was convinced I had spoke for him; said he was set on to do what he did, and if I would procure any thing for him, he would discover every thing to me.'' What a spirit of candour, charity and good nature, generosity and truth, shines through this story, told of a most excellent and pious divine, twenty years after his death without one single voucher!

Come we now to the reasons, which moved his lordship to set about this work at this time. He could delay it no longer, because the reasons of his engaging in it at first, seemed to return upon him. He was then frightened with ''the danger of a popish successor in view, and the dreadful apprehensions of the power of France. England has forgot these dangers, and yet is nearer to them than ever, and therefore he is resolved to awaken them'' with his third volume; but, in the mean time, sends this introduction to let them know they are asleep. He then goes on in describing the condition of the kingdom, after such a manner, as if destruction hung over us by a single hair; as if the pope, the Devil, the pretender and France, were just at our doors.

When the bishop published his history, there was a popish