most logically concluded; “Why, if it be as you say, I may safely whore and drink on, and defy the parson.”  From which, and many the like instances easy to be produced, I think nothing can be more manifest, than that the quarrel is not against any particular points of hard digestion in the Christian system, but against religion in general; which, by laying restraints on human nature, is supposed the great enemy to the freedom of thought and action.

Upon the whole, if it shall still be thought for the benefit of Church and State, that Christianity be abolished; I conceive however, it may be more convenient to defer the execution to a time of peace, and not venture in this conjuncture to disoblige our allies, who, as it falls out, are all Christians, and many of them, by the prejudices of their education, so bigoted, as to place a sort of pride in the appellation.  If upon being rejected by them, we are to trust an alliance with the Turk, we shall find ourselves much deceived:  For, as he is too remote, and generally engaged in war with the Persian emperor, so his people would be more scandalized at our infidelity, than our Christian neighbours.  For they [the Turks] are not only strict observers of religious worship, but what is worse, believe a God; which is more than required of us even while we preserve the name of Christians.

To conclude:  Whatever some may think of the great advantages to trade by this favourite scheme, I do very much apprehend, that in six months time after the act is passed for the extirpation of the Gospel, the Bank, and East-India Stock, may fall at least one per cent. And since that is fifty times more than ever the wisdom of our age thought fit to venture for the preservation of Christianity, there is no reason we should be at so great a loss, merely for the sake of destroying it.

***** ***** ***** *****

FOR THE

ADVANCEMENT OF RELIGION,

AND THE

REFORMATION OF MANNERS.

BY A PERSON OF QUALITY.

NOTE.

In placing this tract second in chronological order I am following Forster and Craik.  All the collected editions of Swift’s works, including the “Miscellanies” of 1711, begin with “The Sentiments of a Church of England Man,” continue with the “Argument,” and then the “Project.”  But the short intervals which separated the publication of all three tracts and the “Letter on the Sacramental Test,” make a strict chronological order of less value than the order of development of the subject-matter with which they deal, granting even that the “Project” appeared after “The Sentiments.”  There seems, however, nothing improbable in the suggestion made by Forster, that Swift planned the writing of both the “Argument” and the “Project” while on a visit to the Earl of Berkeley, at Cranford,