Preface - Page 2

say--an excellent organization, which recognized the frailties of human nature, aimed at making healthier men's souls, and gave mankind a reasonable guidance in the selection of the best motives to action. He himself, as a preacher, made it his principal business, "first to tell the people what is their duty, and then to convince them that it is so." He had a profound faith in existing institutions, which to him were founded on the fundamental traits of humanity. The Church of England he considered to be such an institution; and it was, moreover, regulated and settled by order of the State. To follow its teachings would lead men to become good citizens, honest dealers, truthful and cleanly companions, upright friends. What more could be demanded of any religion?

The Romish Church led away from the Constitution as by law established. Dissent set up private authority, which could no more be permitted in religious than it was in political matters; it meant dissension, revolution, and the upheaval of tried and trusted associations. Therefore, the Church of Rome and the teachings of Dissent were alike dangerous; and against both, whenever they attempted the possession of political power, he waged a fierce and uncompromising war. "Where sects are tolerated in a State," he says, in his "Sentiments of a Church of England Man," "it is fit they should enjoy a full liberty of conscience, and every other privilege of free-born subjects, to which no power is annexed. And to preserve their obedience upon all emergencies, a government cannot give them too much ease, nor trust them with too little power."

Swift had no passionate love for ideals--indeed, he may have thought ideals to be figments of an overheated and, therefore, aberrated imagination. The practically real was the best ideal; and by the real he would understand that power which most capably and most regulatively nursed, guided, and assisted the best instincts of the average man. The average man was but a sorry creature, and required adventitious aids for his development. Gifted as he was with a large sympathy, Swift yet was seemingly incapable of appreciating those thought-forms which help us to visualize mentally our religious aspirations and emotions. A mere emotion was but subject-matter for his satire. He suspected any zeal which protested too much for truth, and considered it "odds on" it being "either petulancy, ambition, or pride."

Whatever may have been his private speculations as to the truth of the doctrines of Christianity they never interfered with his sense of his responsibilities as a clergyman. "I look upon myself," he says, "in the capacity of a clergyman, to be one appointed by Providence for defending a post assigned me, and for gaining over as many enemies as I can. Although I think my cause is just, yet one great motive is my submitting to the pleasure of Providence, and to the