Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/314

306 those times written by each party; and many thousands have done the same as well as I, who I am sure have in their minds drawn the same conclusions.

This is the faction, and these the men, who are now resuming their applications, and giving in their bills of merit to both kingdoms, upon two points, which, of all others, they have the least pretensions to offer. I have collected the facts, with all possible impartiality, from the current histories of those times; and have shown, although very briefly, the gradual proceedings of those sectaries, under the denominations of puritans, presbyterians and independents, for about the space of a hundred and eighty years, from the beginning of queen Elizabeth to this present time. But, notwithstanding all that can be said, these very schismaticks (for such they are in temporals as well as spirituals) are now again expecting, soliciting and demanding (not without insinuated threats, according to their custom) that the parliament should fix them upon an equal foot with the church established. I would fain know to what branch of the legislature they can have the forehead to apply. Not to my lords the bishops; who must have often read how the predecessors of this very faction, acting upon the same principles, drove the whole bench out of the house, who were then, and hitherto continue, one of the three estates: not to the temporal peers, the second of the three estates, who must have heard, that immediately after those rebellious fanaticks had murdered their king, they voted a house of lords to be useless and dangerous, and would let them sit no longer, otherwise than when elected as commoners: not