y, pride, avarice, and ambition
such ill nomenclators, that they cannot furnish appellations for their
owners? Will not heydukes and mamalukes, mandarins and patshaws, or any
other words formed at pleasure, serve to distinguish those who are in the
ministry from others who would be in it if they could? What, for
instance, is easier than to vary the form of speech, and instead of the
word church, make it a question in politics, whether the monument be in
danger? Because religion was nearest at hand to furnish a few convenient
phrases, is our invention so barren we can find no other? Suppose, for
argument sake, that the Tories favoured Margarita, the Whigs, Mrs. Tofts,
and the Trimmers, Valentini, would not Margaritians, Toftians, and
Valentinians be very tolerable marks of distinction? The Prasini and
Veniti, two most virulent factions in Italy, began, if I remember right,
by a distinction of colours in ribbons, which we might do with as good a
grace about the dignity of the blue and the green, and serve as properly
to divide the Court, the Parliament, and the kingdom between them, as any
terms of art whatsoever, borrowed from religion. And therefore I think
there is little force in this objection against Christianity, or prospect
of so great an advantage as is proposed in the abolishing of it.

It is again objected, as a very absurd, ridiculous custom, that a set of
men should be suffered, much less employed and hired, to bawl one day in
seven against the lawfulness of those methods most in use towards the
pursuit of greatness, riches, and pleasure, which are the constant
practice of all men alive on the other six. But this objection is, I
think, a little unworthy so refined an age as ours. Let us argue this
matter calmly. I appeal to the breast of any polite Free-thinker,
whether, in the pursuit of gratifying a pre-dominant passion, he hath not
always felt a wonderful incitement, by reflecting it was a thing
forbidden; and therefore we see, in order to cultivate this test, the
wisdom of the nation hath taken special care that the ladies should be
furnished with prohibited silks, and the men with prohibited wine. And
indeed it were to be wished that some other prohibitions were promoted,
in order to improve the pleasures of the town, which, for want of such
expedients, begin already, as I am told, to flag and grow languid, giving
way daily to cruel inroads from the spleen.

'Tis likewise proposed, as a great a