The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. — Volume 04: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church — Volume 2Swift, Jonathan
Religion
The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. — Volume 04: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church — Volume 2
Swift, Jonathan
Church of England -- Sermons; England and Wales. Test Act 1673; Sermons, English
_Secondly_: By bringing to mind the tragedy of this day, and the
consequences that have arisen from it, we shall be convinced how
necessary it is for those in power to curb, in season, all such unruly
spirits as desire to introduce new doctrines and discipline in the
Church, or new forms of government in the state. Those wicked Puritans
began, in Queen Elizabeth's time, to quarrel only with surplices and
other habits, with the ring in matrimony, the cross in baptism, and the
like; thence they went on to further matters of higher importance, and,
at last, they must needs have the whole government of the Church
dissolved. This great work they compassed, first, by depriving the
bishops of their seats in Parliament, then they abolished the whole
order; and, at last, which was their original design, they seized on all
the Church-lands, and divided the spoil among themselves; and, like
Jeroboam, made priests of the very dregs of the people. This was their
way of reforming the Church. As to the civil government, you have
already heard how they modelled it upon the murder of their King, and
discarding the nobility. Yet, clearly to shew what a Babel they had
built, after twelve years' trial and twenty several sorts of government;
the nation grown weary of their tyranny, was forced to call in the son
of him whom those reformers had sacrificed. And thus were Simeon and
Levi divided in Jacob and scattered in Israel.
_Thirdly_: Although the successors of these Puritans, I mean our present
Dissenters, do not think fit to observe this day of humiliation; yet,
since it would be very proper in them, upon some occasions, to renounce
in a public manner those principles upon which their predecessors acted;
and it will be more prudent in them to do so, because those very
Puritans, of whom ours are followers, found by experience, that after
they had overturned the Church and state, murdered their King, and were
projecting what they called a kingdom of the saints, they were cheated
of the power and possessions they only panted after, by an upstart sect
of religion that grew out of their own bowels, who subjected them to one
tyrant, while they were endeavouring to set up a thousand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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