I confess, if it were certain that so great an advantage would redound to the nation by this expedient, I would submit and be silent: But will any man say, that if the words _whoring, drinking, cheating, lying, stealing_, were by act of parliament ejected out of the English tongue and dictionaries, we should all awake next morning chaste and temperate, honest and just, and lovers of truth? Is this a fair consequence? Or, if the physicians would forbid us to pronounce the words _pox, gout, rheumatism_ and _stone_, would that expedient serve like so many talismans to destroy the diseases themselves? Are party and faction rooted in men's hearts no deeper than phrases borrowed from religion, or founded upon no firmer principles? And is our language so poor that we cannot find other terms to express them? Are _envy, pride, avarice_ and _ambition_ such ill nomenclators, that they cannot furnish appellations for their owners? Will not _heydukes_ and _mamalukes, mandarins_ and _patshaws_, or any other words formed at pleasure, serve to distinguish those who are in the ministry from others who would be in it if they could? What, for instance, is easier than to vary the form of speech, and instead of the word church, make it a question in politics, whether the Monument be in danger? Because religion was nearest at hand to furnish a few convenient phrases, is our invention so barren, we can find no other? Suppose, for argument sake, that the Tories favoured Margarita, the Whigs Mrs. Tofts,[11] and the Trimmers[12] Valentini,[13] would not _Margaritians, Toftians,_ and _Valentinians_ be very tolerable marks of distinction? The _Prasini_ and _Veniti,_[14] two most virulent factions in Italy, began (if I remember right) by a distinction of colours in ribbons, which we might do with as good a grace[15] about the dignity of the blue and the green, and would serve as properly to divide the Court, the Parliament, and the Kingdom between them, as any terms of art whatsoever, borrowed from religion. And therefore I think, there is little force in this objection against Christianity, or prospect of so great an advantage as is proposed in the abolishing of it. [Footnote 11: Margarita was a famous Italian singer of the day. Her name was Francesca Margherita de l'Epine, and she was known as "the Italian woman." In his "Journal to Stella" for August 6th, 1711, Swift writes: "We have a music meeting in our town [Windsor] to-night. I went to the rehearsal of it, and there was Margarita and her sister, and another drab, and a parcel of fiddlers; I was weary, and would not go to the meeting, which I am sorry for, because I heard it was a great assembly." (See present edition, vol. ii. p. 219).