ty and contempt; that have soured his temper, and made him
fearless. But where is the merit of being bold, to a man that is secure
of impunity to his person, and is past apprehension of anything else? He
that hath neither reputation nor bread hath very little to lose, and
hath therefore as little to fear. And, as it is usually said, "Whoever
values not his own life, is master of another man's;" so there is
something like it in reputation: He that is wholly lost to all regards
of truth or modesty, may scatter so much calumny and scandal, that some
part may perhaps be taken up before it fall to the ground; because the
ill talent of the world is such, that those who will be at pains enough
to inform themselves in a malicious story, will take none at all to be
undeceived, nay, will be apt with some reluctance to admit a favourable
truth.

[Footnote 8: Tindal was not an old man at the time Swift wrote,
certainly not older than was Swift himself. [T. S.]]

To expostulate, therefore, with this author for doing mischief to
religion, is to strew his bed with roses; he will reply in triumph, that
this was his design; and I am loth to mortify him, by asserting he hath
done none at all. For I never yet saw so poor an atheistical scribble,
which would not serve as a twig for sinking libertines to catch at. It
must be allowed in their behalf, that the faith of Christians is not as
a grain of mustard seed in comparison of theirs, which can remove such
mountains of absurdities, and submit with so entire a resignation to
such apostles. If these men had any share of that reason they pretend
to, they would retire into Christianity, merely to give it ease. And
therefore men can never be confirmed in such doctrines, until they are
confirmed in their vices; which last, as we have already observed, is
the principal design of this and all other writers against revealed
religion.

I am now opening the book which I propose to examine. An employment, as
it is entirely new to me, so it is that to which, of all others, I have
naturally the greatest antipathy. And, indeed, who can dwell upon a
tedious piece of insipid thinking, and false reasoning, so long as I am
likely to do, without sharing the infection?

But, before I plunge into the depths of the book itself, I must be
forced to wade through the shallows of a long preface.

This preface, large as we see it, is only made up of such supernumerary
arguments against an independent power in th