Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/402

rians, or persons of libertine and atheistical tenets; and on the other, of professed papists, or such as are openly in the interest of the abdicated family. Now, it is very natural for all subordinate sects and denominations in a state, to side with some general party, and to choose that, which they find to agree with themselves in some general principle. Thus, at the restoration, the presbyterians, anabaptists, independents, and other sects, did all, with very good reason, unite and solder up their several schemes, to join against the church; who, without regard to their distinctions, treated them all as equal adversaries. Thus, our present dissenters do very naturally close in with the whigs, who profess moderation, declare they abhor all thoughts of persecution, and think it hard that those, who differ only in a few ceremonies and speculations, should be denied the privilege and profit of serving their country, in the highest employments of state. Thus, the atheist, libertines, despisers of religion and revelation in general, that is to say, all those who usually pass under the name of freethinkers, do properly join with the same body; because they likewise preach up moderation, and are not so overnice to distinguish between an unlimited liberty of conscience, and an unlimited freedom of opinion. Then, on the other side, the professed firmness of the tories for episcopacy, as an apostolical institution; their aversion to those sects, who lie under the reproach of having once destroyed their constitution, and who, they imagine, by too indiscreet a zeal for reformation, have defaced the primitive model of the church; next, their veneration for monarchical government in the common course of succession, and their

hatred