Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/401

Rh by making them bishops; even those few they were able to seduce, would not be their tools at a lower rate.

But, because this author, and others of his standard, affect to make use of that word tool, when they have a mind to be shrewd and satirical; I desire once for all to set them right. A tool and an instrument, in the metaphorical sense, differ thus: the former, is an engine in the hands of knaves; the latter, in those of wise and honest men. The greatest ministers are instruments in the hands of princes, and so are princes themselves in the hands of God; and in this sense, the clergy are ready to be instruments of any good to the prince or people. But that the clergy of England, since the reformation, have at any time been the tools of a party, is a calumny which history and constant experience will immediately confute. Schismatick and fanatick preachers have indeed been perpetually employed that way, with good success; by the faction against king Charles I, to murder their prince, and ruin the monarchy; by king James II, to bring in popery: and ever since the revolution, to advance the unmeasurable appetite of power and wealth, among a set of profligate upstarts. But in all these three instances, the established clergy (except a very few, like tares among wheat, and those generally sown by the enemy) were so far from being tools, that in the first, they were persecuted, imprisoned and deprived; and in the two others, they were great instruments, under God, for preserving our religion and liberty.

In the same paragraph, which contains a project for turning out the present ministry, and restoring the last; he owns, that the queen is now served with