Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/114

106 that no gentleman of a liberal education, and regular in his morals, did ever profess himself a freethinker: where then are these kind of people to be found? among the worst part of the soldiery, made up of pages, younger brothers of obscure families, and others of desperate fortunes: or else among idle town fops, and now and then a drunken 'squire of the country. Therefore, nothing can be plainer, than that ignorance and vice are two ingredients absolutely necessary in the composition of those you generally call freethinkers, who, in propriety of speech, are no thinkers at all. And since I am in the way of it, pray consider one thing farther: as young as you are, you cannot but have already observed, what a violent run there is among too many weak people against university education: be firmly assured, that the whole cry is made up by those, who were either never sent to a college, or, through their irregularities and stupidity, never made the least improvement, while they were there, I have above forty of the latter sort now in my eye; several of them in this town, whose learning, manners, temperance, probity, goodnature, and politicks, are all of a piece: others of them in the country, oppressing their tenants, tyrannizing over the neighbourhood, cheating the vicar, talking nonsense, and getting drunk at the sessions. It is from such seminaries as these, that the world is provided with the several tribes and denominations of freethinkers; who, in my judgment, are not to be reformed by arguments offered to prove the truth of the christian religion, because reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired: for, in the course of things, men always grow vicious, before