us to his church, as well as we send missionaries there?  Both projects are exactly of a piece, and equally reasonable; and if those heathen priests were here, it would be our duty to hearken to them, and think freely whether they may not be in the right rather than we.  I heartily wish a detachment of such divines as Dr Atterbury, Dr. Smallridge,[6] Dr. Swift, Dr. Sacheverell, and some others, were sent every year to the farthest part of the heathen world, and that we had a cargo of their priests in return, who would spread freethinking among us; then the war would go on, the late ministry be restored, and faction cease, which our priests inflame by haranguing upon texts, and falsely call that preaching the Gospel.

[Footnote 6:  Dr. Smallridge, it will be remembered, was the gentleman who indignantly denied the authorship of “A Tale of a Tub” (see vol. i. of this edition).  He became Bishop of Bristol in 1714, and died in 1719.  His style was well thought of at the time. [T.S.]]

I have another project in my head, which ought to be put in execution, in order to make us freethinkers:  It is a great hardship and injustice, that our priests must not be disturbed while they are prating in the pulpit.  For example:  Why should not William Penn the Quaker, or any Anabaptist, Papist, Muggletonian, Jew, or Sweet-Singer,[7] have liberty to come into St Paul’s Church, in the midst of divine service, and endeavour to convert first the aldermen, then the preacher, and singing-men?  Or pray, why might not poor Mr. Whiston,[8] who denies the divinity of Christ, be allowed to come into the Lower House of Convocation, and convert the clergy?  But, alas! we are overrun with such false notions, that, if Penn or Whiston should do their duty, they would be reckoned fanatics, and disturbers of the holy synod, although they have as good a title to it as St Paul had to go into the synagogues of the Jews; and their authority is full as divine as his.

[Footnote 7:  The Sweet-Singers were a fanatical sect of wailers, founded in Scotland, but which had no long life. [T.S.]] Christ himself commands us to be freethinkers; for he bids us search the scriptures, and take heed what and whom we hear; by which he plainly warns us, not to believe our bishops and clergy; for Jesus Christ, when he considered that all the Jewish and heathen priests, whose religion he came to abolish, were his enemies, rightly concluded that those appointed by him to preach his own gospel, would probably be so too; and could not be secure, that any set of priests, of the faith he delivered, would ever be otherwise; therefore it is fully demonstrated that the clergy of the Church of England are mortal enemies to Christ, and ought not to be believed.

[Footnote 8:  Yet Whiston, who receives this side-cut, was himself an anxious combatant of Collins, in his “Reflections on an Anonymous Pamphlet, entitled, ‘A Defence of Freethinking.’” 1713. [S.]]