intended for their perufal, it rallies nothing but what they preach againft. It contains nothing to provoke them by the leaft fcurrility upon their perfons or their functions. It celebrates the church of England as the most perfect of all others in difcipline and doctrine; it advances no opinion they reject, nor condemns any they receive. If the clergy's refentments lay upon their hands, in my humble opinion, they might have found more proper objects to employ them on; nondum tibi defuit hoftis; I mean thofe heavy, illiterate fcriblers, prostitute in their reputations, vicious in their lives, and ruined in their fortunes, who, to the fhame of good fenfe as well as piety, are greedily read, merely upon the ftrength of bold, falfe, impious affertions, mixed with unmannerly reflections upon the priesthood, and openly intended against all religion; in fhort, full of fuch principles as are kindly received, because they are levelled to remove those terrors, that religion tells men will be the confequence of immoral lives. Nothing like which is to be met with in this discourse, though fome of them are pleafed fo freely to cenfure it. And I wish,

there

there were no other inftance of what I have too frequently obferved, that many of that reverend body are not always very nice in diftinguishing between their enemies and their friends.

Had the author's intentions met with a more candid interpretation from fome, whom out of respect he forbears to name, he might have been encouraged to an examination of books written by some of thofe authors above defcribed, whofe errors, ignorance, dulness, and villany he thinks he could have detected and expofed in fuch a manner, that the perfons, who are most conceived to be infected by them, would foon lay them afide and be afhamed: but he has now given over those thoughts; fince the weightieft men in the weightieft stations are pleased to think it a more dangerous point to laugh at those corruptions in religion, which they themselves must difapprove, than to endeavour pulling up those very foundations, wherein all chriftians have agreed.

He thinks it no fair proceeding, that any

Alluding to Dr. Sharp the archbishop of York's representation of the author.

perfon

perfon fhould offer determinately to fix a name upon the author of this difcourfe, who hath all along concealed himself from moft of his nearest friends: yet several have gone a farther ftep, and pronounced another book to have been the work of the fame hand with this: which the author directly affirms to be a thorough mistake; he having yet never fo much as read that difcourfe: a plain inftance how little truth there often is in general furmifes, or in conjectures drawn from a fimilitude of ftyle, or way of thinking.

Had the author written a book to exe pose the abuses in law, or in phyfic, he believes the learned profeffors in either faculty would have been fo far from refenting it, as to have given him thanks for his pains, efpecially if he had made an ho nourable refervation for the true practice of either science: but religion, they tell us, ought not to be ridiculed; and, they tell us truth: yet furely the corruptions in it may; may; for we are taught by the triteft maxim in the world, that, religion being

Letter of enthufiafm, fup- to him, in the last of these vopofed to have been written by lumes. Col. Hunter: fee Swift's letter

the

the beft of things, its corruptions are likely to be the worst.

There is one thing which the judicious reader cannot but have obferved, that fome of those paffages in this difcourfe, which appear moft liable to objection, are what they call parodies, where the author perfonates the style and manner of other writers, whom he has a mind to expose. I fhall produce one inftance; it is in the 61ft page. Dryden, L'Eftrange, and fome others I fhall not name, are here levelled at, who having spent their lives in faction, and apoftacies, and all manner of vice,. pretended to be fufferers for loyalty and religion. So Dryden tells us in one of his prefaces of his merits and fufferings, thanks God that he poffeffes his foul in patience; in other places he talks at the fame rate; and L'Eftrange often uses the like ftyle; and I believe the reader may find more perfons to give that paffage an application: but this is enough to direct thofe, who may have overlooked the author's intention.

There are three or four other paffages, which prejudiced or ignorant readers have drawn by great force to hint at ill mean

ings; as if they glanced at some tenets in religion. In anfwer to all which, the author folemnly protests, he is intirely innocent; and never had it once in his thoughts, that any thing he faid would in the leaft be capable of fuch interpretations, which he will engage to deduce full as fairly from the moft innocent book in the world. And it will be obvious to every reader, that this was not any part of his fcheme or defign, the abuses he notes being fuch as all Church-of-England men agree in; nor was it proper for his fubject to meddle with other points, than fuch as have been perpetually controverted fince the reformation.

To instance only in that passage about the three wooden machines mentioned in the introduction: in the original manuscript there was a defcription of a fourth, which thofe, who had the papers in their power, blotted out, as having fomething in it of fatyr, that I fuppofe they thought was too particular; and therefore they were forced to change it to the number three, from whence fome have endeavoured to fqueeze out a dangerous meaning,

that