endeavouring at wit in your sermons, because by the strictest
computation, it is very near a million to one that you have none; and
because too many of your calling have consequently made themselves
everlastingly ridiculous by attempting it. I remember several young men
in this town, who could never leave the pulpit under half a dozen
conceits; and this faculty adhered to those gentlemen a longer or
shorter time exactly in proportion to their several degrees of dulness:
accordingly, I am told that some of them retain it to this day. I
heartily wish the brood were at an end.
Before you enter into the common insufferable cant of taking all
occasions to disparage the heathen philosophers, I hope you will differ
from some of your brethren, by first enquiring what those philosophers
can say for themselves. The system of morality to be gathered out of the
writings or sayings of those ancient sages, falls undoubtedly very short
of that delivered in the Gospel, and wants besides, the divine sanction
which our Saviour gave to His. Whatever is further related by the
evangelists, contains chiefly, matters of fact, and consequently of
faith, such as the birth of Christ, His being the Messiah, His Miracles,
His death, resurrection, and ascension. None of which can properly come
under the appellation of human wisdom, being intended only to make us
wise unto salvation. And therefore in this point nothing can justly be
laid to the charge of the philosophers further than that they were
ignorant of certain facts that happened long after their death. But I am
deceived, if a better comment could be anywhere collected, upon the
moral part of the Gospel, than from the writings of those excellent men;
even that divine precept of loving our enemies, is at large insisted on
by Plato, who puts it, as I remember, into the mouth of Socrates.[7] And
as to the reproach of heathenism, I doubt they had less of it than the
corrupted Jews in whose time they lived. For it is a gross piece of
ignorance among us to conceive that in those polite and learned ages,
even persons of any tolerable education, much less the wisest
philosophers did acknowledge or worship any more than one almighty
power, under several denominations, to whom they allowed all those
attributes we ascribe to the Divinity: and as I take it, human
comprehension reacheth no further: neither did our Saviour think it
necessary to explain to us the nature of God, because I suppose it would
be impossible without bestowing on us other faculties than we possess at
present. But the true misery of the heathen world appears to be what I
before mentioned, the want of a Divine Sanction, without which the
dictates of the philosophers failed in the point of authority, and
consequently the bulk of mankind lay indeed under a great load of
ignorance even in the article of morality, but the philosophers
themselves did not. Take the matter in this light, it will afford field
enough for a divine to enlarge on, by showing the advantages which the
Christian world has over the heathen, and the absolute necessity of
Divine Revelation, to make the knowledge of the true God, and the
practice of virtue more universal in the world.
[Footnote 7: This is in the "Crito" of Plato, where Socrates says it is
wrong to do harm to our enemies. [T. S.] ]
I am not ignorant how much I differ in this opinion from some ancient
fathers in the Church, who arguing against the heathens, made it a
principal topic to decry their philosophy as much as they could: which,
I hope, is not altogether our present case. Besides, it is to be
considered, that those fathers lived in the decline of literature; and
in my judgment (who should be unwilling to give the least offence)
appear to be rather most excellent, holy persons, than of transcendent
genius and learning. Their genuine writings (for many of them have
extremely suffered by spurious editions) are of admirable use for
confirming the truth of ancient doctrines and discipline, by shewing the
state and practice of the primitive church. But among such of them as
have fallen in my way, I do not remember any whose manner of arguing or
exhorting I could heartily recommend to the imitation of a young divine
when he is to speak from the pulpit. Perhaps I judge too hastily; there
being several of them in whose writings I have made very little
progress, and in others none at all. For I perused only such as were
recommended to me, at a time when I had more leisure and a better
disposition to read, than have since fallen to my share.[8]
[Footnote 8: Swift must refer here to the years he spent at Moor Park,
in the house of Sir William Temple. The "Tale of a Tub," however, shows
that he had not idled his time, and that his acquaintance with the
writings of the fathers was fairly intimate. [T, S.] ]
To return then to the heathen philosophers, I hope you will not only
give them quarter, but make their works a considerable part of your
study: To these I will venture to add the principal orators and
historians, and perhaps a few of the poets: by the reading of which, you
will soon discover your mind and thoughts to be enlarged, your
imagination extended and refined, your judgment directed, your
admiration lessened, and your fortitude increased; all which advantages
must needs be of excellent use to a divine, whose duty it is to preach
and practise the contempt of human things.
I would say something concerning quotations, wherein I think you cannot
be too sparing, except from Scripture, and the primitive writers of the
Church. As to the former, when you offer a text as a proof of an
illustration, we your hearers expect to be fairly used, and sometimes
think we have reason to complain, especially of you younger divines,
which makes us fear that some of you conceive you have no more to do
than to turn over a concordance, and there having found the principal
word, introduce as much of the verse as will serve your turn, though in
reality it makes nothing for you. I do not altogether disapprove the
manner of interweaving texts of scripture through the style of your
sermons, wherein however, I have sometimes observed great instances of
indiscretion and impropriety, against which I therefore venture to give
you a caution.
As to quotations from ancient fathers, I think they are best brought in
to confirm some opinion controverted by those who differ from us: in
other cases we give you full power to adopt the sentence for your own,
rather than tell us, "as St. Austin excellently observes." But to
mention modern writers by name, or use the phrase of "a late excellent
prelate of our Church," and the like, is altogether intolerable, and for
what reason I know not, makes every rational hearer ashamed. Of no
better a stamp is your "heathen philosopher" and "famous poet," and
"Roman historian," at least in common congregations, who will rather
believe you on your own word, than on that of Plato or Homer.
I have lived to see Greek and Latin almost entirely driven out of the
pulpit, for which I am heartily glad. The frequent use of the latter was
certainly a remnant of Popery which never admitted Scripture in the
vulgar language; and I wonder, that practice was never accordingly
objected to us by the fanatics.
The mention of quotations puts me in mind of commonplace books, which
have been long in use by industrious young divines, and I hear do still
continue so. I know they are very beneficial to lawyers and physicians,
because they are collections of facts or cases, whereupon a great part
of their several faculties depend; of these I have seen several, but
never yet any written by a clergyman; only from what I am informed, they
generally are extracts of theological and moral sentences drawn from
ecclesiastical and other authors, reduced under proper heads, usually
begun, and perhaps finished, while the collectors were young in the
church, as being intended for materials or nurseries to stock future
sermons. You will observe the wise editors of ancient authors, when they
meet a sentence worthy of being distinguished, take special care to have
the first word printed in capital letters, that you may not overlook it:
Such, for example, as the INCONSTANCY of FORTUNE, the GOODNESS of PEACE,
the EXCELLENCY of WISDOM, the CERTAINTY of DEATH: that PROSPERITY makes
men INSOLENT, and ADVERSITY HUMBLE; and the like eternal truths, which
every ploughman knows well enough before Aristotle or Plato were
born.[9] If theological commonplace books be no better filled, I think
they had better be laid aside, and I could wish that men of tolerable
intellectuals would rather trust their own natural reason, improved by a
general conversation with books, to enlarge on points which they are
supposed already to understand. If a rational man reads an excellent
author with just application, he shall find himself extremely improved,
and perhaps insensibly led to imitate that author's perfections,
although in a little time he should not remember one word in the book,
nor even the subject it handled: for books give the same turn to our
thoughts and way of reasoning, that good and ill company do to our
behaviour and conversation; without either loading our memories, or
making us even sensible of the change. And particularly I have observed
in preaching, that no men succeed better than those who trust entirely
to the stock or fund of their own reason, advanced indeed, but not
overlaid by commerce with books. Whoever only reads in order to
transcribe wise and shining remarks, without entering into the genius
and spirit of the author, as it is probable he will make no very
judicious extract, so he will be apt to trust to that collection in all
his compositions, and be misled out of the regular way of thinking, in
order to introduce those materials, which he has been at the pains to
gather and the product of all this will be found a manifest incoherent
piece of patchwork.
[Footnote 9: Thus in first edition. Scott and Hawkesworth have: "though
he never heard of Aristotle or Plato." [T.S.]]
Some gentlemen abounding in their university erudition, are apt to fill
their sermons with philosophical terms and notions of the metaphysical
or abstracted kind, which generally have one advantage, to be equally
understood by the wise, the vulgar, and the preacher himself. I have
been better entertained, and more informed by a chapter[10] in the
"Pilgrim's Progress," than by a long discourse upon the will and the
intellect, and simple or complex ideas. Others again, are fond of
dilating on matter and motion, talk of the fortuitous concourse of
atoms, of theories, and phenomena, directly against the advice of St
Paul, who yet appears to have been conversant enough in those kinds of
studies.
[Footnote 10: Thus in first edition. Scott and Hawkesworth have "a few
pages" instead of "a chapter" [T. S ]]
I do not find that you are anywhere directed in the canons or articles,
to attempt explaining the mysteries of the Christian religion. And
indeed since Providence intended there should be mysteries, I do not see
how it can be agreeable to piety, orthodoxy or good sense, to go about
such a work. For, to me there seems to be a manifest dilemma in the case
if you explain them, they are mysteries no longer, if you fail, you have
laboured to no purpose. What I should think most reasonable and safe for
you to do upon this occasion is, upon solemn days to deliver the
doctrine as the Church holds it, and confirm it by Scripture. For my
part, having considered the matter impartially, I can see no great
reason which those gentlemen you call the freethinkers can have for
their clamour against religious mysteries, since it is plain, they were
not invented by the clergy, to whom they bring no profit, nor acquire
any honour. For every clergyman is ready either to tell us the utmost he
knows, or to confess that he does not understand them; neither is it
strange that there should be mysteries in divinity as well as in the
commonest operations of nature.
And here I am at a loss what to say upon the frequent custom of
preaching against atheism, deism, freethinking, and the like, as young
divines are particularly fond of doing especially when they exercise
their talent in churches frequented by persons of quality, which as it
is but an ill compliment to the audience; so I am under some doubt
whether it answers the end.
Because persons under those imputations are generally no great
frequenters of churches, and so the congregation is but little edified
for the sake of three or four fools who are past grace. Neither do I
think it any part of prudence to perplex the minds of well-disposed
people with doubts, which probably would never have otherwise come into
their heads. But I am of opinion, and dare be positive in it, that not
one in an hundred of those who pretend to be freethinkers, are really so
in their hearts. For there is one observation which I never knew to
fail, and I desire you will examine it in the course of your life, that
no gentleman of a liberal education, and regular in his morals, did ever
profess himself a freethinker: where then are these kind of people to be
found? Among the worst part of the soldiery made up of pages, younger
brothers of obscure families, and others of desperate fortunes; or else
among idle town fops, and now and then a drunken 'squire of the country.
Therefore nothing can be plainer, than that ignorance and vice are two
ingredients absolutely necessary in the composition of those you
generally call freethinkers, who in propriety of speech, are no thinkers
at all. And since I am in the way of it, pray consider one thing
farther: as young as you are, you cannot but have already observed, what
a violent run there is among too many weak people against university
education. Be firmly assured, that the whole cry is made up by those who
were either never sent to a college; or through their irregularities and
stupidity never made the least improvement while they were there. I have
at least[11] forty of the latter sort now in my eye; several of them in
this town, whose learning, manners, temperance, probity, good-nature,
and politics, are all of a piece. Others of them in the country,
oppressing their tenants, tyrannizing over the neighbourhood, cheating
the vicar, talking nonsense, and getting drunk at the sessions. It is
from such seminaries as these, that the world is provided with the
several tribes and denominations of freethinkers, who, in my judgment,
are not to be reformed by arguments offered to prove the truth of the
Christian religion, because reasoning will never make a man correct an
ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired: for in the course of
things, men always grow vicious before they become unbelievers; but if
you would once convince the town or country profligate, by topics drawn
from the view of their own quiet, reputation, health, and advantage,
their infidelity would soon drop off: This I confess is no easy task,
because it is almost in a literal sense, to fight with beasts. Now, to
make it clear, that we are to look for no other original of this
infidelity, whereof divines so much complain, it is allowed on all
hands, that the people of England are more corrupt in their morals than
any other nation at this day under the sun: and this corruption is
manifestly owing to other causes, both, numerous and obvious, much more
than to the publication of irreligious books, which indeed are but the
consequence of the former. For all the writers against Christianity
since the Revolution have been of the lowest rank among men in regard to
literature, wit, and good sense, and upon that account wholly
unqualified to propagate heresies, unless among a people already
abandoned.
[Footnote 11: Scott and Hawkesworth print "above forty." [T. S.]]
In an age where everything disliked by those who think with the majority
is called disaffection, it may perhaps be ill interpreted, when I
venture to tell you that this universal depravation of manners is owing
to the perpetual bandying of factions among us for thirty years past;
when without weighing the motives of justice, law, conscience, or
honour, every man adjusts his principles to those of the party he hath
chosen, and among whom he may best find his own account: But by reason
of our frequent vicissitudes, men who were impatient of being out of
play, have been forced to recant, or at least to reconcile their former
tenets with every new system of administration. Add to this, that the
old fundamental custom of annual parliaments being wholly laid aside,
and elections growing chargeable, since gentlemen found that their
country seats brought them in less than a seat in the House, the voters,
that is to say, the bulk of the common people have been universally
seduced into bribery, perjury, drunkenness, malice, and slanders.
Not to be further tedious, or rather invidious, these are a few among
other causes which have contributed to the ruin of our morals, and
consequently to the contempt of religion: For imagine to yourself, if
you please, a landed youth, whom his mother would never suffer to look
into a book for fear of spoiling his eyes, got into parliament, and
observing all enemies to the clergy heard with the utmost applause, what
notions he must imbibe; how readily he will join in the cry; what an
esteem he will conceive of himself; and what a contempt he must
entertain, not only for his vicar at home, but for the whole order.
I therefore again conclude, that the trade of infidelity hath been taken
up only for an expedient to keep in countenance that universal
corruption of morals, which many other causes first contributed to
introduce and to cultivate. And thus, Mr. Hobbes' saying upon reason may
be much more properly applied to religion: that, "if religion will be
against a man, a man will be against religion." Though after all, I have
heard a profligate offer much stronger arguments against paying his
debts, than ever he was known to do against Christianity; indeed the
reason was, because in that juncture he happened to be closer pressed by
the bailiff than the parson.
Ignorance may perhaps be the mother of superstition; but experience hath
not proved it to be so of devotion: for Christianity always made the
most easy and quickest progress in civilized countries. I mention this
because it is affirmed that the clergy are in most credit where
ignorance prevails (and surely this kingdom would be called the paradise
of clergymen if that opinion were true) for which they instance England
in the times of Popery. But whoever knows anything of three or four
centuries before the Reformation, will find the little learning then
stirring was more equally divided between the English clergy and laity
than it is at present. There were several famous lawyers in that period,
whose writings are still in the highest repute, and some historians and
poets who were not of the Church.[12] Whereas now-a-days our education
is so corrupted, that you will hardly find a young person of quality
with the least tincture of knowledge, at the same time that many of the
clergy were never more learned, or so scurvily treated. Here among us,
at least, a man of letters out of the three professions, is almost a
prodigy. And those few who have preserved any rudiments of learning are
(except perhaps one or two smatterers) the clergy's friends to a man:
and I dare appeal to any clergyman in this kingdom, whether the greatest
dunce in the parish be not always the most proud, wicked, fraudulent,
and intractable of his flock.
[Footnote 12: What Swift calls learning was, in his day, the property,
so to speak, of professional men, such as divines, lawyers, and
university teachers. The common man was too poor or too much taxed to
acquire it; the aristocrat often too lazy or too fond of
pleasure-seeking to bother about it. The Pre-Reformation days, to which
Swift refers, could boast such men as Fabyan, Hall, Chaucer, Gower, and
Caxton, as well as Lord Berners, Sir Thomas More, and Lydgate, who were
not, in any sense, professional men. [T.S.]]
I think the clergy have almost given over perplexing themselves and
their hearers with abstruse points of Predestination, Election, and the
like; at least it is time they should; and therefore I shall not trouble
you further upon this head.
I have now said all I could think convenient with relation to your
conduct in the pulpit: your behaviour in life[13] is another scene, upon
which I shall readily offer you my thoughts, if you appear to desire
them from me by your approbation of what I have here written; if not, I
have already troubled you too much.
[Footnote 13: Scott and Hawkesworth print "your behaviour in the world."
The above is the reading of the first edition. [T. S.]]
I am, Sir,
Your Affectionate
Friend and Servant
A.B.
January 9th.
1719-20.
***** ***** ***** *****
SOME ARGUMENTS AGAINST ENLARGING
THE POWER OF BISHOPS IN
LETTING OF LEASES.
NOTE.
The years between that which saw the publication of the "Drapier
Letters," and that which rang with the fame of "Gulliver's Travels,"
were busy fighting years for Swift. Apart from his vigorous championship
of the Test, and his war against the Dissenters, he espoused the cause
of the inferior clergy of his own Church, as against the bishops. The
business of filling the vacant sees of Ireland had degenerated into what
we should now call "jobbery"; and during the period of Sir Robert
Walpole's administration it was rarely that an Irishman was selected. On
any question, therefore, which affected the welfare of the lower clergy,
it will at once be seen, that the Lords Spiritual, sitting in the Irish
Upper House, would find little difficulty in coming to a solution. That
the solution should also be one which only increased the clergy's
difficulties, might be expected from a body which aimed chiefly at
acquiring wealth and power for itself.
In the reign of Charles I. an act was passed, "prohibiting all bishops,
and other ecclesiastical corporations, from setting their lands for
above the term of twenty-one years: the rent reserved to be half the
real value of such lands at the time they were set." As Swift points
out, about the time of the Reformation, a trade was carried on by the
popish bishops, who felt that their terms of office would be short, and
who, consequently, to get what benefit they could while in office, "made
long leases and fee-farms of great part of their lands, reserving very
inconsiderable rents, sometimes only a chiefry." It was owing to a
continuance in this traffic by the bishops when they became Protestants,
and to a recognition of the injustice of such alienation, that the
legislature passed the act. In 1723, however, an attempt was made for
its repeal. Swift was not the man to permit the bishops to have their
way, if he could help it. His opinion of Irish bishops is well known.
"No blame," he said, "rested with the court for these appointments.
Excellent and moral men had been selected upon every occasion of
vacancy, but it unfortunately happened, that as these worthy divines
crossed Hounslow Heath, on their way to Ireland, to take possession of
their bishoprics, they have been regularly robbed and murdered by the
highwaymen frequenting that common, who seize upon their robes and
patents, come over to Ireland, and are consecrated bishops in their
stead." To prevent, therefore, the encroachments of such individuals he
wrote this tract, in which he clearly demonstrates the justice and
salutariness of Charles's act. His contention, as Monck Mason points out
("History of St. Patrick's Cathedral," p. 392, note 1) "is confirmed by
all writers upon the subject," and quotes from Carte's "Life of James,
Duke of Ormond," where it is stated that the bishoprics in Ireland had,
"the greatest part of them, been depauperated in the change of religion
by absolute grants and long leases (made generally by the popish bishops
that conformed)--some of them not able to maintain a bishop, several
were, by these means, reduced to £50 a year, as Waterford, Kilfenora,
and others, and some to five marks, as Cloyne and Kilmacduagh." To Swift
is largely due the fact that the House of Commons, when they received
the bill from the Lords, threw it out.