IV. Let me here add, that I am apt to think, that when you draw up your Law, you will find it so very difficult to settle the Point of _Decency_ in Writing, in respect to all the various kinds of _Irony_ and _Ridicule_, that you will be ready to lay aside your Project; and that you will be no more able to settle that _Point of Decency_, than you would be to settle by Law, that _Cleanliness_ in Clothes, and that Politeness in Dress, Behaviour, and Conversation, which become Men of Quality and Fortune in the World, and should be habitual to them: And that, if you are able to do that to your own Satisfaction, you will find it very difficult to engage the Lawmakers in your Project. For I am persuaded, that if our Lawmakers were, out of a rational Principle, disposed to give Liberty by Law to _serious_ Opposition to publickly receiv'd Notions, they would not think it of much Importance to make a _Law_ about a Method of _Irony_. They will naturally conclude, that if Men may and ought to be allow'd to write _seriously_ in Opposition to publickly receiv'd Doctrines, they should be allow'd to write in their own way; and will be unwilling to be depriv'd of ingenious and witty Discourses, or such as some of them will judge so, about a Subject wherein _serious free_ Discourse is allow'd. Besides, I am apt to think, that you, upon consideration of the Advantages which the Church has receiv'd from the _Berkenheads_, the _Heylins_, the _Ryves's_, the _Needhams_, the _Lestranges_, the _Nalsons_, the _Lesleys_, the _Oldesworths_, and others, in their _Mercurius Aulicus_'s, their _Mercurius Pragmaticus's_, their _Mercurius Rusticus's_, their _Observators_[63], their _Heraclitus Ridens_'s, _Rehearsals_, their _Examiners_[64], and the three Volumes against the _Rights of the Church_; from the _Butlers_ in their _Hudibras_'s, and other Burlesque Works upon the Religion and Religious Conduct of the Dissenters; or from the _Eachards_, the _Tom Browns_, and _Swifts_; or from the _Parkers_[65], _Patricks_[66], _Souths_[67], _Sherlocks_[68], _Atterburys_[69], and _Sacheverels_[70]; in their Discourses, and Tracts against the Nonconformists, Whigs, Low-Church-men, and Latitudinarians; and other such ironical, satirical, and polemical Divines; and from such _drolling_ Judges as _Howel_, _Recorder_ of London, and the Chief Justice _Jefferys_, who, in all Causes, where _Whigs_ or Dissenters were the Persons accus'd and try'd before them, carried on the Trial by a [71] Train of ridicule on them, their Witnesses and Counsel: I say, I am apt to think, that you would be unwilling to be depriv'd of what has been and may be again so serviceable.