Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/335

Rh Whether episcopacy, which is held by the church to be a divine and apostolical institution, be not a fundamental point of religion, particularly in that essential one of conferring holy orders?

Whether, by necessary consequences, the several expedients among the sectaries to constitute their teachers, are not absolutely null and void?

Whether the sectaries will ever agree to accept ordination only from bishops?

Whether the bishops and clergy will be content to give up episcopacy, as a point indifferent, without which the church can well subsist?

Whether that great tenderness toward sectaries, which now so much prevails, be chiefly owing to the fears of popery, or to that spirit of atheism, deism, scepticism, and universal immorality, which all good men so much lament?

Granting popery to have many more errours in religion, than any one branch of the sectaries, let us examine the actions of both, as they have each affected the peace of these kingdoms, with allowance for the short time which the sectaries had to act in, who are in a manner but of yesterday. The papists, in the time of king James the Second, used all endeavours to establish their superstition, wherein they failed by the united power of English church-protestants, with the prince of Orange's assistance. But it cannot be asserted, that these bigotted papists had the least design to oppose or murder their king, much less, to abolish kingly government; nor was it their interest or inclination to attempt either.

On the other side the puritans, who had almost from the beginning of queen Elizabeth's reign been Rh