s that this defender cites demonstrates that only a
person like the religious dean could have made this observation about
the concern for religious instruction by the Lilliputians before their
fall from original perfection:

... we cannot think, but that the courteous Reader is fully
satisfied, that the Reverend D---- we are vindicating, cannot
possibly be the Author of this part of the Book that is
maliciously ascrib'd to him; which is so very trifling, that it
is not to be imagined that a _serious_ D----n, who has Religion,
and the good of Souls so _much_ at heart, could act so contrary
to the Dignity of his Character merely to gratify a little Party
Malice, or to oblige a Set of People who are never likely to have
it in their Power to serve him or any of their Adherents.
Doubtless he, _good Man_, employs his Time to more sacred
Purposes than in writing Satyrs and Libels upon his Superiors, or
in composing _Grub-street_ Pamphlets to divert the Vulgar of all
Denominations.[3]

Consider also his defense of Swift's exposure of the corrupt bishops,
the "holy Persons" in the House of Lords (_Travels_, II, vi).
Believing that Swift's pungent satire on the church hierarchy is good
and true, he makes the dean himself the target of a playful bit of
raillery, a type of irony for which Swift and Arbuthnot were both
notorious:

Being _slavish prostitute Chaplains_ is certainly a good step
_towards becoming an Holy Lord_; but it does not always succeed,
as _some Folks_ very well know by Experience; for the same Degree
of Iniquity that can raise one Man to an _Archbishoprick_,
cannot lift another above a _Deanery_.[4]

Such commentary suggests that at least one very early reader of the
_Travels_ sensed the possibility of Swift's use of certain portions of
his narrative to vent disappointment at his failure to receive the
church preferment he thought he deserved and to carry on his personal
vendetta against obstructive bishops like the "crazy Prelate" Sharpe,
Archbishop of York, one of the detestable and "dull Divines" pilloried
in the autobiographical poem "The Author Upon Himself" (1714).

Concerning Swift's religious uniformitarianism, the author of
_Gulliver Decypher'd_ defends Swift's understandable bias for the
established Anglican Church as a vested interest, which in the
_Travels_ is expressed through the giant king's strictures