LORD OXFORD'S ANSWER TO MR. SHOWER[1].
HAD not a very painful distemper confined me, I had desired the favour of seeing you some time since; and I should have spoken very plainly to you, as I shall whenever I see you. I have long foretold, that the dissenters must be saved whether they will or not: they resist even restraining grace; and would almost convince me, that the notion of man's being a mechanism is true in every part. To see men moved as puppets, with rage for their interest, with envy acting against their own interest, having men's persons in admiration: not only those of their own body, who certainly are the first who pretended to consummate wisdom and deep policy, yet have shown that they knew not the common affairs of this nation, but are dwellers in thick clay. They are epicureans in act, puritans in profession, politicians in conceit, and a prey and laughingstock to the deists and synagogue of the libertines, in whom they have trusted, and to whose infallibility they have sold themselves and their congregations. All they have done, or can do, shall never make me their
- ↑ The answer was written by Dr. Swift, as appears not only from his handwriting, but particularly from a correction in the original draught. It appears also, by the Journal to Stella, that another answer had been written by the earl of Oxford; "which his friends would not let him send, but was a very good one."
