e to write the Tale of a Tub."

The digressions relating to Wotton and Bentley must be confessed to
discover want of knowledge, or want of integrity; he did not understand
the two controversies, or he willingly misrepresented them. But wit can
stand its ground against truth only a little while. The honours due to
learning have been justly distributed by the decision of posterity.

The Battle of the Books is so like the Combat des Livres, which the same
question concerning the ancients and moderns had produced in France,
that the improbability of such a coincidence of thoughts, without
communication, is not, in my opinion, balanced by the anonymous
protestation prefixed, in which all knowledge of the French book is
peremptorily disowned[98].

For some time after Swift was probably employed in solitary study,
gaining the qualifications requisite for future eminence. How often he
visited England, and with what diligence he attended his parishes, I
know not. It was not till about four years afterwards that he became a
professed author; and then, one year, 1708, produced the Sentiments of a
Church of England Man; the ridicule of astrology, under the name of
Bickerstaff; the Argument against abolishing Christianity, and the
Defence of the Sacramental Test.

The Sentiments of a Church of England Man is written with great
coolness, moderation, ease, and perspicuity. The Argument against
abolishing Christianity is a very happy and judicious irony. One passage
in it deserves to be selected.

"If christianity were once abolished, how could the freethinkers, the
strong reasoners, and the men of profound learning, be able 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 take away the greatest, perhaps the only, topick we have left.
Who would ever have suspected Asgill 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 cho