[Footnote 18:  Shocked Swift’s habit when using a word of French origin was to keep the French spelling. [T.  S.]]

And to urge another argument of a parallel nature.  If Christianity were once abolished, how could the freethinkers, the strong reasoners, and the men of profound learning, be able to find another subject so calculated in all points whereon to display their abilities?  What wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived of, from those whose genius by continual practice hath been wholly turned upon raillery and invectives against religion, and would therefore never be able to shine or distinguish themselves upon any other subject!  We are daily complaining of the great decline of wit among us, and would we take away the greatest, perhaps the only topic we have left?  Who would ever have suspected Asgil for a wit, or Toland for a philosopher, if the inexhaustible stock of Christianity had not been at hand to provide them with materials?  What other subject, through all art or nature, could have produced Tindal for a profound author, or furnished him with readers?  It is the wise choice of the subject that alone adorns and distinguishes the writer.  For, had a hundred such pens as these been employed on the side of religion, they would have immediately sunk into silence and oblivion.

Nor do I think it wholly groundless, or my fears altogether imaginary, that the abolishing of Christianity may perhaps bring the Church into danger, or at least put the senate to the trouble of another securing vote.  I desire I may not be mistaken; I am far from presuming to affirm or think that the Church is in danger at present, or as things now stand; but we know not how soon it may be so when the Christian religion is repealed.  As plausible as this project seems, there may a dangerous design lurk under it:[19] Nothing can be more notorious, than that the Atheists, Deists, Socinians, Anti-trinitarians, and other subdivisions of freethinkers, are persons of little zeal for the present ecclesiastical establishment:  Their declared opinion is for repealing the Sacramental Test; they are very indifferent with regard to ceremonies; nor do they hold the jus divinum of Episcopacy.  Therefore this may be intended as one politic step toward altering the constitution of the Church established, and setting up Presbytery in the stead, which I leave to be further considered by those at the helm.

[Footnote 19:  Craik follows Scott in altering this sentence to “there may be a dangerous design lurking under it”; but all other editors, except Morley and Roscoe, give it as printed in the text. [T.S.]]