Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 4.djvu/407

Rh to be more copious in any thing else. However, it is not easy to conceive, why he should be so copious upon a subject he so much despises, unless it were to gratify his talent of railing at the clergy, in the number of whom he disdains to be reckoned, because he is a bishop; for it is a style I observed some prelates have fallen into of late years, to talk of clergymen, as if themselves were not of the number. You will read in many of their speeches at Dr. Sacheverell's trial, expressions to this or the like effect: "my lords, if clergymen be suffered," &c. wherein they seem to have reason: and I am pretty confident, that a great majority of the clergy were heartily inclined to disown any relation they had to the managers in lawn. However, it was a confounding argument against presbytery, that those prelates who are most suspected to lean that way, treated their inferiour brethren with haughtiness, rigour, and contempt; although, to say the truth, nothing better could be hoped for; because I believe it may pass for a universal rule, that in every diocese governed by bishops of the whig species, the clergy (especially the poorer sort) are under double discipline; and the laity left to themselves. The opinion of sir Thomas Moore, which he produces to prove the ill consequences, or insignificancy of convocations, advances no such thing; but says, "If the clergy assembled often, and might act as other assemblies of clergy in Christendom, much good might have come; but the misfortune lay in their long disuse, and that in his own, and a good part of his father's time, they never came together, except at the command of the prince." I suppose