Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/334

326 they would have us think the papists are against them?

Whether the Dutch, who are most distinguished for allowing liberty of conscience, do ever admit any persons, who profess a different scheme of worship from their own, into civil employments, although they may be forced by the nature of their government to receive mercenary troops of all religions?

Whether the dissenters ever pretended, until of late years, to desire more than a bare toleration?

Whether, if it be true, what a sorry pamphleteer asserts, who lately writ for repealing the test, that the dissenters in this kingdom are equally numerous with the churchmen, it would not be a necessary point of prudence, by all proper and lawful means, to prevent their farther increase?

The great argument given, by those whom they call low churchmen, to justify the large tolerations allowed to disssenters, has been; that by such indulgences, the rancour of those sectaries would gradually wear off, many of them would come over to us, and their parties, in a little time, crumble to nothing.

Query, Whether if what the above pamphleteer asserts, that the sectaries are equal in numbers with conformists, be true, it does not clearly follow, that those repeated tolerations, have operated directly contrary, to what those low church politicians pretended to foresee and expect?

Whether any clergyman, however dignified or distinguished, if he think his own profession most agreeable to Holy Scripture, and the primitive church, can really wish in his heart, that all sectaries should be upon an equal foot with the churchmen, in the point of civil power and employments? Whether