But his Lordship draws towards a conclusion, and bids us “look about, to consider the danger we are in, before it is too late;” for he assures us, we are already “going into some of the worst parts of popery;"[55] like the man who was so much in haste for his new coat, that he put it on the wrong side out.  “Auricular confession, priestly absolution, and the sacrifice of the mass,” have made great progress in England, and nobody has observed it:  several other popish points “are carried higher with us than by the papists themselves."[56] And somebody, it seems, “had the impudence to propose a union with the Gallican church."[57] I have indeed heard that Mr. Lesley[58] published a discourse to that purpose, which I have never seen; nor do I perceive the evil in proposing an union between any two churches in Christendom.  Without doubt Mr. Lesley is most unhappily misled in his politics; but if he be the author of the late tract against Popery[59], he has given the world such a proof of his soundness in religion, as many a bishop ought to be proud of.  I never saw the gentleman in my life:  I know he is the son of a great and excellent prelate, who upon several accounts was one of the most extraordinary men of his age.  Mr. Lesley has written many useful discourses upon several subjects, and hath so well deserved of the Christian religion, and the Church of England in particular, that to accuse him of “impudence for proposing an union” in two very different faiths, is a style which I hope few will imitate.  I detest Mr. Lesley’s political principles as much as his Lordship can do for his heart; but I verily believe he acts from a mistaken conscience, and therefore I distinguish between the principles and the person.  However, it is some mortification to me, when I see an avowed nonjuror contribute more to the confounding of Popery, than could ever be done by a hundred thousand such Introductions as this.

[Footnote 55:  Page 70.]

[Footnote 56:  Page 70.]

[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.]]