[Footnote 57: Swift here disowns a charge loudly urged by the Whigs of the time against the high churchmen. There were, however, strong symptoms of a nearer approach on their part to the church of Rome. Hickes, the head of the Jacobite writers, had insinuated, that there was a proper sacrifice in the Eucharist; Brett had published a Sermon on the "Doctrine of Priestly Absolution as essential to Salvation;" Dodwell had written against Lay-Baptism, and his doctrine at once excluded all the dissenters (whose teachers are held as lay-men) from the pale of Christianity; and, upon the whole, there was a general disposition among the clergy to censure, if not the Reformation itself, at least the mode in which it was carried on. [S.]] [Footnote 58: Charles Lesley, or Leslie, the celebrated nonjuror. He published a Jacobite paper, called the "Rehearsal," and was a strenuous assertor of divine right; but he was also so steady a Protestant, that he went to Bar-le-Duc to convert the Chevalier de St George from the errors of Rome. [S.] See note on p. 63. [T. S.]] [Footnote 59: "The Case stated between the Church of Rome and the Church of England," 1713.] His Lordship ends with discovering a small ray of comfort. "God be thanked there are many among us that stand upon the watch-tower, and that give faithful warning; that stand in the breach, and make themselves a wall for their church and country; that cry to God day and night, and lie in the dust mourning before him, to avert those judgments that seem to hasten towards us. They search into the mystery of iniquity that is working among us, and acquaint themselves with that mass of corruption that is in popery."[60] He prays "that the number of these may increase, and that he may be of that number, ready either to die in peace, or to seal that doctrine he has been preaching above fifty years, with his blood."[61] This being his last paragraph, I have made bold to transcribe the most important parts of it. His design is to end after the manner of orators, with leaving the strongest impression possible upon the minds of his hearers. A great breach is made; "the mystery of popish iniquity is working among us;" may God avert those "judgments that are hastening towards us!" I am an old man, "a preacher above fifty years," and I now expect and am ready to die a martyr for the doctrines I have preached. What an amiable idea does he here leave upon our minds, of Her Majesty and her government! He has been poring so long upon Fox's Book of Martyrs, that he imagines himself living in the reign of Queen Mary, and is resolved to set up for a knight-errant against Popery. Upon the supposition of his being in earnest, (which I am sure he is not) it would require but a very little more heat of imagination, to make a history of such a knight's adventures. What would he say, to behold the "fires kindled in Smithfield, and all over the town," on the 17th of