Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/115

Rh before they become unbelievers; but if you would once convince the town or country profligate, by topicks drawn from the view of their own quiet, reputation, health, and advantage, their infidelity would soon drop off: this, I confess, is no easy task, because it is, almost in a literal sense, to fight with beasts. Now, to make it clear, that we are to look for no other original of this infidelity, whereof divines so much complain, it is allowed on all hands, that the people of England are more corrupt in their morals, than any other nation at this day under the sun: and this corruption is manifestly owing to other causes, both numerous and obvious, much more than to the publication of irreligious books, which indeed are but the consequence of the former. For all the writers against christianity, since the revolution, have been of the lowest rank among men in regard to literature, wit, and good sense, and upon that account wholly unqualified to propagate heresies, unless among a people already abandoned.

In an age, where every thing disliked by those, who think with the majority, is called disaffection, it may perhaps be ill interpreted, when I venture to tell you, that this universal depravation of manners, is owing to the perpetual bandying of factions among us for thirty years past, when, without weighing the motives of justice, law, conscience, or honour, every man adjusts his principles to those of the party he has chosen, and among whom he may best find his own account; but by reason of our frequent vicissitudes, men who were impatient of being out of play, have been forced to recant, or at least to reconcile their former tenets, with every new sytem of administration. Add to this, that the old