[Footnote 36:  See note on p. 50 of vol. i. of this edition of Swift’s works. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 37:  Page 51.]

I am not surprised to see the Bishop mention with contempt all Convocations of the Clergy;[38] for Toland, Collins, Tindal,[39] and others of the fraternity, talk the very same language.  His Lordship confesses he “is not” inclined “to expect much from the assemblies of clergymen.”  There lies the misfortune; for if he and some more of his order would correct their “inclinations,” a great deal of good might be expected from such assemblies, as much as they are now cramped by that submission, which a corrupt clergy brought upon their innocent successors.  He will not deny that his copiousness in these matters is, in his own opinion, one of the meanest parts of his new work.  I will agree with him, unless he happens to be more “copious” in any thing else.  However, it is not easy to conceive why he should be so “copious” upon a subject he so much despises, unless it were to gratify his talent of railing at the clergy, in the number of whom he disdains to be reckoned, because he is a Bishop.  For it is a style I observe some prelates have fallen into of late years, to talk of clergymen as if themselves were not of the number:  You will read in many of their speeches at Dr. Sacheverel’s[40] trial, expressions to this or the like effect:  “My lords, if clergymen be suffered,” &c. wherein they seem to have reason; and I am pretty confident, that a great majority of the clergy were heartily inclined to disown any relation they had to the managers in lawn.  However, it was a confounding argument against Presbytery, that those who are most suspected to lean that way, treating their inferior brethren with haughtiness, rigour, and contempt:  Although, to say the truth, nothing better could be hoped for; because, I believe, it may pass for a universal rule, that in every diocese governed by bishops of the Whig species, the clergy (especially the poorer sort) are under double discipline, and the laity left to themselves.  The opinion of Sir Thomas More, which he produces to prove the ill consequences or insignificancy of Convocations, advances no such thing, but says, “if the clergy assembled often, and might act as other assemblies of clergy in Christendom, much good might have come:  but the misfortune lay in their long disuse, and that in his own and a good part of his father’s time, they never came together, except at the command of the prince."[41]

[Footnote 38:  Page 47.]

[Footnote 39:  See note, p. 9. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 40:  Henry Sacheverell, D.D., was educated at Marlborough and Oxford.  At Magdalen College he was a fellow-student with Addison, and obtained there his fellowship and doctor’s degree.  In 1709 he preached two sermons, one at the Derby Assizes, and the other at St. Paul’s, in which he urged the imminent danger of the Church.  For these sermons, which the parliament considered highly