werable for the errors and depravity of human nature.

Within these last two hundred years all sorts of temporal power have
been wrested from the clergy, and much of their ecclesiastic, the reason
or justice of which proceeding I shall not examine; but, that the
remedies were a little too violent with respect to their possessions,
the legislature hath lately confessed by the remission of their First
Fruits.[6] Neither do the common libellers deny this, who in their
invectives only tax the Church with an insatiable desire of power and
wealth (equally common to all bodies of men as well as individuals) but
thank God, that the laws have deprived them of both. However, it is
worth observing the justice of parties: The sects among us are apt to
complain, and think it hard usage to be reproached now after fifty years
for overturning the state, for the murder of a king, and the indignity
of a usurpation; yet these very men and their partisans, are continually
reproaching the clergy, and laying to their charge the pride, the
avarice, the luxury, the ignorance, and superstition, of Popish times
for a thousand years past.

[Footnote 6: The first fruits were the first year's income of
ecclesiastical benefices. In the middle ages they were taken by the Pope
as a right; but were handed over to the English crown in 1534. Anne in
1703 gave them back to the Church by letters patent, an act confirmed by
Parliament in 1704. The "Bounty" of Queen Anne, however, did not extend
to Ireland; and one of Swift's missions in London was to obtain this
remission of the first fruits for the Irish clergy also. [T. S.]]

He thinks it a scandal to government that such an unlimited liberty
should be allowed of publishing books against those doctrines in
religion, wherein all Christians have agreed, much more to connive at
such tracts as reject all revelation, and by their consequences often
deny the very being of a God. Surely 'tis not a sufficient atonement for
the writers, that they profess much loyalty to the present government,
and sprinkle up and down some arguments in favour of the dissenters;
that they dispute as strenuously as they can for liberty of conscience,
and inveigh largely against all ecclesiastics, under the name of High
Church; and, in short, under the shelter of some popular principles in
politics and religion, undermine the foundations of all piety and
virtue.

As he doth not reckon every schism of that damnable nature which som