s as the coffee houses.
[T.S.]]

There is one advantage greater than any of the foregoing, proposed by
the abolishing of Christianity: that it will utterly extinguish parties
among us, by removing those factious distinctions of High and Low
Church, of Whig and Tory, Presbyterian and Church of England, which are
now so many mutual clogs upon public proceedings, and are apt to prefer
the gratifying themselves, or depressing their adversaries, before the
most important interest of the state.

I confess, if it were certain that so great an advantage would redound
to the nation by this expedient, I would submit and be silent: But will
any man say, that if the words _whoring, drinking, cheating, lying,
stealing_, were by act of parliament ejected out of the English tongue
and dictionaries, we should all awake next morning chaste and temperate,
honest and just, and lovers of truth? Is this a fair consequence? Or, if
the physicians would forbid us to pronounce the words _pox, gout,
rheumatism_ and _stone_, would that expedient serve like so many
talismans to destroy the diseases themselves? Are party and faction
rooted in men's hearts no deeper than phrases borrowed from religion, or
founded upon no firmer principles? And is our language so poor that we
cannot find other terms to express them? Are _envy, pride, avarice_ and
_ambition_ such ill nomenclators, that they cannot furnish appellations
for their owners? Will not _heydukes_ and _mamalukes, mandarins_ and
_patshaws_, or any other words formed at pleasure, serve to distinguish
those who are in the ministry from others who would be in it if they
could? What, for instance, is easier than to vary the form of speech,
and instead of the word church, make it a question in politics, whether
the Monument be in danger? Because religion was nearest at hand to
furnish a few convenient phrases, is our invention so barren, we can
find no other? Suppose, for argument sake, that the Tories favoured
Margarita, the Whigs Mrs. Tofts,[11] and the Trimmers[12] Valentini,[13]
would not _Margaritians, Toftians,_ and _Valentinians_ be very tolerable
marks of distinction? The _Prasini_ and _Veniti,_[14] two most virulent
factions in Italy, began (if I remember right) by a distinction of
colours in ribbons, which we might do with as good a grace[15] about the
dignity of the blue and the green, and would serve as properly to divide
the Court, the Parliament, and the Kingdom between them, as any t