and Copticks receive; and why may we not think freely, and reject the rest?  Some think the scriptures wholly inspired, some partly; and some not at all.  Now this is just the very case of the Bramins, Persees, Bonzes, Talapoins, Dervises, Rabbis, and all other priests, who build their religion upon books, as our priests do upon their Bibles; they all equally differ about the copies, various readings and inspirations, of their several Scriptures, and God knows which are in the right:  Freethinking alone can determine it.

[Footnote 10:  In the discourse on “Freethinking,” p. 80, Collins insists much on a passage in Victor of Tunis, from which he infers, that the Gospels were corrected and altered in the fourth century. [S.]]

It would be endless to show in how many particulars the priests of the Heathen and Christian churches, differ about the meaning even of those Scriptures which they universally receive as sacred.  But, to avoid prolixity, I shall confine myself to the different opinions among the priests of the Church of England, and here only give you a specimen, because even these are too many to be enumerated.

I have found out a bishop, (though indeed his opinions are condemned by all his brethren,) who allows the Scriptures to be so difficult, that God has left them rather as a trial of our industry than a repository of our faith, and furniture of creeds and articles of belief; with several other admirable schemes of freethinking, which you may consult at your leisure.

The doctrine of the Trinity is the most fundamental point of the whole Christian religion.  Nothing is more easy to a freethinker, yet what different notions of it do the English priests pretend to deduce from Scripture, explaining it by “specific unities, eternal modes of subsistence,” and the like unintelligible jargon?  Nay, it is a question whether this doctrine be fundamental or no; for though Dr. South and Bishop Bull affirm it, yet Bishop Taylor and Dr. Wallis deny it.[11] And that excellent freethinking prelate, Bishop Taylor, observes, that Athanasius’s example was followed with too much greediness; by which means it has happened, that the greater number of our priests are in that sentiment, and think it necessary to believe the Trinity, and incarnation of Christ.[12]

[Footnote 11:  Dr. Robert South (1633-1716), rector of Islip.  The reference by Swift is to his controversy with Sherlock on the doctrine of the Trinity.  The two disputants got into such depths that both were charged with heresy.

Dr. George Bull (1634-1710), Bishop of St. David’s, wrote the “Defensio Fidei Nicenae.”  For his exposition of the necessity for the belief in the divinity of the Son of God he received the thanks of Bossuet.

Dr. Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down and Connor (1613-1667), and author of “Holy Living” and “Holy Dying,” wrote also “Unum Necessarium, or the Doctrine and Practice of Repentance.”  His treatment, in this work, of the doctrine of original sin was considered heterodox by Bishop Warner and Dr. Sanderson, and a controversy ensued, in the course of which Taylor was imprisoned in Chepstow Castle on a charge of being concerned in a Royalist insurrection.