This obstinacy must be rooted out with the profession of it; while the generation are less at liberty daily to affront God Almighty and dishonour His holy worship, we are wanting in our duty to God and our mother, the Church of England.

How can we answer it to God, to the Church, and to our posterity, to leave them entangled with fanaticism, error, and obstinacy in the bowels of the nation; to leave them an enemy in their streets, that in time may involve them in the same crimes, and endanger the utter extirpation of religion in the nation?

What is the difference betwixt this and being subjected to the power of the Church of Rome, from whence we have reformed?  If one be an extreme on one hand, and one on another, it is equally destructive to the truth to have errors settled among us, let them be of what nature they will.

Both are enemies of our Church and of our peace; and why should it not be as criminal to admit an enthusiast as a Jesuit?  Why should the Papist with his seven sacraments be worse than the Quaker with no sacraments at all?  Why should religious houses be more intolerable than meeting-houses?  Alas, the Church of England!  What with Popery on one hand, and schismatics on the other, how has she been crucified between two thieves!

Now let us crucify the thieves.  Let her foundations be established upon the destruction of her enemies.  The doors of mercy being always open to the returning part of the deluded people, let the obstinate be ruled with the rod of iron.

Let all true sons of so holy and oppressed a mother, exasperated by her afflictions, harden their hearts against those who have oppressed her.

And may God Almighty put it into the hearts of all the friends of truth to lift up a standard against pride and Antichrist, that the posterity of the sons of error may be rooted out from the face of this land for ever.

III.—­THE ‘DRAPIER’S LETTERS’

(NOS.  I AND 2)

BY JONATHAN SWIFT

(The two pamphlets entitled The Conduct of the Allies_ and The Public Spirit of the Whigs—­which are sometimes considered the capital examples of the political efforts of Swift’s magnificent genius—­were the very Jachin and Boaz of the Tory administration in the last years of Anne, and the effect of them has been admitted by such a violent Whig and such a good critic as Jeffrey.  They seemed, however, not wholly suitable for insertion here; first, because of their length (for one would have occupied nearly a third, the other nearly a fourth of this volume), and secondly, because the greater part of each does really, to some extent, underlie the charge brought against political pamphlets generally, and, being occupied with a great number of personal and particular matters, requires either much intimacy with the period or elaborate