Ridiculing such
things, could he, in any just sense, be thought a Christian? But, as
Schlosser justly remarks, even ridiculing the peculiarities of Luther and
Calvin as he _did_ ridicule them, Swift could not be thought other
than constitutionally incapable of religion. Even a Pagan philosopher, if
made to understand the case, would be incapable of scoffing at any
_form_, natural or casual, simple or distorted, which might be
assumed by the most solemn of problems--problems that rest with the weight
of worlds upon the human spirit--
'Fix'd fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute.'
the destiny of man, or the relations of man to God. Anger, therefore,
Swift _might_ feel, and he felt it [7] to the end of his most wretched
life; but what reasonable ground had a man of sense for _astonishment_--
that a princess, who (according to her knowledge) was sincerely pious,
should decline to place such a man upon an Episcopal throne? This argues,
beyond a doubt, that Swift was in that state of constitutional irreligion,
irreligion from a vulgar temperament, which imputes to everybody else its
own plebeian feelings. People differed, he fancied, not by more and less
religion, but by more and less dissimulations. And, therefore, it seemed
to him scandalous that a princess, who must, of course, in her heart
regard (in common with himself) all mysteries as solemn masques and
mummeries, should pretend in a case of downright serious business, to pump
up, out of dry conventional hoaxes, any solid objection to a man of his
shining merit.
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