to find another subject so
calculated in all points whereon to display their abilities? What
wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived of, from those whose
genius by continual practice hath been wholly turned upon raillery and
invectives against religion, and would therefore never be able to shine
or distinguish themselves upon any other subject! We are daily
complaining of the great decline of wit among us, and would we take away
the greatest, perhaps the only topic we have left? Who would ever have
suspected Asgil for a wit, or Toland for a philosopher, if the
inexhaustible stock of Christianity had not been at hand to provide them
with materials? What other subject, through all art or nature, could
have produced Tindal for a profound author, or furnished him with
readers? It is the wise choice of the subject that alone adorns and
distinguishes the writer. For, had a hundred such pens as these been
employed on the side of religion, they would have immediately sunk into
silence and oblivion.

Nor do I think it wholly groundless, or my fears altogether imaginary,
that the abolishing of Christianity may perhaps bring the Church into
danger, or at least put the senate to the trouble of another securing
vote. I desire I may not be mistaken; I am far from presuming to affirm
or think that the Church is in danger at present, or as things now
stand; but we know not how soon it may be so when the Christian religion
is repealed. As plausible as this project seems, there may a dangerous
design lurk under it:[19] Nothing can be more notorious, than that the
Atheists, Deists, Socinians, Anti-trinitarians, and other subdivisions
of freethinkers, are persons of little zeal for the present
ecclesiastical establishment: Their declared opinion is for repealing
the Sacramental Test; they are very indifferent with regard to
ceremonies; nor do they hold the _jus divinum_ of Episcopacy. Therefore
this may be intended as one politic step toward altering the
constitution of the Church established, and setting up Presbytery in the
stead, which I leave to be further considered by those at the helm.

[Footnote 19: Craik follows Scott in altering this sentence to "there
may be a dangerous design lurking under it"; but all other editors,
except Morley and Roscoe, give it as printed in the text. [T.S.]]

In the last place, I think nothing can be more plain, than that by this
expedient, we shall run into the evil we chiefly pretend to a