Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 4.djvu/411

Rh and disposed to receive those doctrines which Luther and his followers had universally spread. Cranmer the archbishop, Cromwell, and others of the court, did secretly embrace the reformation; and the king's abrogating the pope's supremacy, made the people in general run into the new doctrine with greater freedom, because they hoped to be supported in it by the authority and example of their prince; who disappointed them so far, that he made no other step than rejecting the pope's supremacy, as a clog upon his own power and passions; but retained every corruption besides, and became a cruel persecutor, as well of those who denied his own supremacy, as of all others who professed any protestant doctrine. Neither has any thing disgusted me more in reading the histories of those times, than to see one of the worst princes of any age or country, celebrated as an instrument in that glorious work of the reformation.

The bishop, having gone over all the matters that properly fall within his introduction, proceeds to expostulate with several sorts of people: first, with protestants who are no christians, such as atheists, deists, freethinkers, and the like enemies to Christianity: but these he treats with the tenderness of a friend, because they are all of them of sound whig principles in church and state. How ever to do him justice, he lightly touches some old topicks for the truth of the Gospel: and concludes, by wishing that the freethinkers would consider well, if (Anglice, whether) they think it possible to bring a nation to be without any religion at all; and what the consequences of that may prove; and in case they Rh