Chapter 16

Swift took an entirely different attitude towards Collins from that assumed by the professional controversialists. He refused to take him seriously, and no doubt he felt that ridicule would as effectually serve his purpose as another method. Moreover, he sought to use the opportunity for scoring a point against the Whigs, by insisting on the political side of the matter, and, in the person of an assumed defender of Collins, betrayed undoubted Whig leanings. Swift, at this time, was deep in work, pamphleteering for Harley and St. John. He had already written "The Conduct of the Allies," and "Some Remarks on the Barrier Treaty," and was soon to write "The Public Spirit of the Whigs." The assumed and sarcastic defence of Collins must be taken as a Swiftian dodge to bring odium and suspicion on the opponents of the Tory ministry, by showing that the propounders of the hateful and ridiculous atheism were themselves Whigs.

Sir Henry Craik, in a note to his reprint of this tract ("Selections from Swift," Oxford, 1893, vol. ii. p. 42), agrees with Scott as to the motive which urged Swift in writing it. "In this later tract," he says, "Swift makes no attempt to cloak his enmity; and he boldly assumes the character of a Whig as the propounder of those atheistical absurdities, which he wished, as a useful political move, but without any scrupulous regard to fairness, to represent as part and parcel of the tenets of that party." "What gave colour," says Scott, "though only a colour, to his charge was, that Toland, Tindal, Collins, and most of those who carried to licence their abhorrence of Church-government, were naturally enough enrolled among that party in politics who professed most attachment to freedom of sentiment." It must not, however, be forgotten, that Swift's attachment to his Church, as it influenced him against the Whigs, would naturally influence him against the deistical writers also, and that he must be credited, to that extent, with honesty of purpose. That these writers were Whigs was, if one may so put it, an accident, of which it would have been more than a human act for Swift not to take advantage, for party purposes.

Curiously enough, none of Swift's more modern biographers have thought this imitation of Collins's "Discourse" worthy of a mention; yet it is, in its way, as fine a performance as his castigation of Bishop Burnet and his "Introduction." The fooling is admirably carried on, and the intention, as explained in the introduction, is excellently well realized. It frightened Collins into Holland. To appreciate the cleverness with which it has been done, one should read Swift's "Abstract" side by side with Collins's "Discourse."

The pamphlet was advertised for sale in "The Examiner" for Tuesday, January 26th, 1712-13. In His "Letters to Stella" (January 16th and 21st, 1712-13), Swift makes the following references to it: "I came home at seven, and began a little whim which just came into my head, and will make a three-penny pamphlet. It shall be finished in a week; and, if it succeeds, you shall know what it is; otherwise not. ... I was to-day with my printer, to give him a little pamphlet I have written; but not politics. It will be out by Monday."

The present text is based on that of the first edition, collated with those given by Nichols, Hawkesworth and Scott. None of the "Miscellanies" prints this tract, nor is it given in Faulkner's edition of 1735-38 (6 vols.). It is fully annotated and edited by Nichols in the first volume of his "Supplement to Swift's Works" (1779).

[T. S.]

Mr. COLLIN'S DISCOURSE OF FREE-THINKING, PUT INTO PLAIN ENGLISH, BY WAY OF ABSTRACT, FOR THE USE OF THE POOR.

BY A FRIEND OF THE AUTHOR.

1713.

INTRODUCTION.

Our party having failed, by all their political arguments, to re-establish their power; the wise leaders have determined, that the last and principal remedy should be made use of, for opening the eyes of this blinded nation; and that a short, but perfect, system of their divinity, should be published, to which we are all of us ready to subscribe, and which we lay down as a model, bearing a close analogy to our schemes in religion. Crafty, designing men, that they might keep the world in awe, have, in their several forms of government, placed a _Supreme Power_ on earth, to keep human-kind in fear of being hanged; and a supreme power in heaven, for fear of being damned. In order to cure men's apprehensions of the former, several of our learned members have writ many profound treatises on Anarchy; but a brief complete body of Atheology seemed yet wanting, till this irrefragable Discourse appeared. However, it so happens, that our ablest brethren, in their elaborate disquisitions upon this subject, have written with so much caution, that ignorant unbelievers have edified very little by them. I grant that those daring spirits, who first adventured to write against the direct rules of the gospel, the current of antiquity, the religion of the magistrate, and the laws of the land, had some measures to keep; and particularly when they railed at religion, were in the right to use little artful disguises, by which a jury could only find them guilty of abusing heathenism or popery. But the mystery is now revealed, that there is no such thing as mystery or revelation; and though our friends are out of place and power, yet we may have so much confidence in the present ministry, to be secure, that those who suffer so many free speeches against their sovereign and themselves, to pass unpunished, will never resent our expressing the freest thoughts against their religion; but think with Tiberius, that if there be a God, he is able enough to revenge any injuries done to himself, without expecting the civil power to interpose.[1]

[Footnote 1: Swift was evidently very fond of this reference, since he uses it several times in his writings. [T. S.]]

_By these reflections I was brought to think, that the most ingenious author of the Discourse upon Freethinking, in a letter to Somebody, Esq.; although he hath used less reserve than any of his predecessors, might yet have been more free and open. I considered, that several well-witters to infidelity, might be discouraged by a show of logic, and a multiplicity of quotations, scattered through his book, which to understandings of that size, might carry an appearance of something like book-learning, and consequently fright them from reading for their improvement; I could see no reason why these great discoveries should be hid from our youth of quality, who frequent Whites and Tom's; why they should not be adapted to the capacities of the Kit-Cat and Hanover Clubs,[2] who might then be able to read lectures on them to their several toasts: and it will be allowed on all hands, that nothing can sooner help to restore our abdicated cause, than a firm universal belief of the principles laid down by this sublime author._

[Footnote 2: These were chocolate houses of the time, supported mainly by the aristocracy and the gamblers. White's is still in existence, and has had the honour of having had a special history written about it. Tom's was in Russell Street, and so-called after its landlord, Tom West. The Kit-Cat Club was the resort of the Whig wits of the day, and the Hanover Club of those who favoured the Hanover succession. [T. S.]]

For I am sensible that nothing would more contribute to "the continuance of the war" and the restoration of the late ministry, than to have the doctrines delivered in this treatise well infused into the people. I have therefore compiled them into the following Abstract, wherein I have adhered to the very words of our author, only adding some few explanations of my own, where the terms happen to be too learned, and consequently a little beyond the comprehension of those for whom the work was principally intended, I mean the nobility and gentry of our party. After which I hope it will be impossible for the malice of a Jacobite, highflying, priestridden faction, to misrepresent us. The few additions I have made are for no other use than to help the transition, which could not otherwise be kept in an abstract; but I have not presumed to advance anything of my own; which besides would be needless to an author who hath so fully handled and demonstrated every particular. I shall only add, that though this writer, when he speaks of priests, desires chiefly to be understood to mean the English clergy, yet he includes all priests whatsoever, except the ancient and modern heathens, the Turks, Quakers, and Socinians.

THE LETTER.

SIR,

I send you this apology for Freethinking,[3] without the least hopes of doing good, but purely to comply with your request; for those truths which nobody can deny, will do no good to those who deny them. The clergy, who are so impudent to teach the people the doctrines of faith, are all either cunning knaves or mad fools; for none but artificial, designing men, and crack-brained enthusiasts, presume to be guides to others in matters of speculation, which all the doctrines of Christianity are; and whoever has a mind to learn the Christian religion, naturally chooses such knaves and fools to teach them. Now the Bible, which contains the precepts of the priests' religion, is the most difficult book in the world to be understood; it requires a thorough knowledge in natural, civil, ecclesiastical history, law, husbandry, sailing, physic, pharmacy, mathematics, metaphysics, ethics, and everything else that can be named: And everybody who believes it ought to understand it, and must do so by force of his own freethinking, without any guide or instructor.

[Footnote 3: The chief strain of Collins's "Discourse" is an eulogium upon the necessity and advantage of Freethinking; in which it is more than insinuated that the advocates of revealed religion are enemies to the progress of enlightened inquiry. This insidious position is ridiculed in the following parody. [S.]]

How can a man think at all, if he does not think freely? A man who does not eat and drink freely, does not eat and drink at all. Why may not I be denied the liberty of freeseeing, as well as freethinking? Yet nobody pretends that the first is unlawful, for a cat may look on a king; though you be near-sighted, or have weak or sore eyes, or are blind, you may be a free-seer; you ought to see for yourself, and not trust to a guide to choose the colour of your stockings, or save you from falling into a ditch.

In like manner, there ought to be no restraint at all on thinking freely upon any proposition, however impious or absurd. There is not the least hurt in the wickedest thoughts, provided they be free; nor in telling those thoughts to everybody, and endeavouring to convince the world of them; for all this is included in the doctrine of freethinking, as I shall plainly show you in what follows; and therefore you are all along to understand the word freethinking in this sense.

If you are apt to be afraid of the devil, think freely of him, and you destroy him and his kingdom. Freethinking has done him more mischief than all the clergy in the world ever could do; they believe in the devil, they have an interest in him, and therefore are the great supports of his kingdom. The devil was in the States-General before they began to be freethinkers. For England and Holland[4] were formerly the Christian territories of the devil; I told you how he left Holland; and freethinking and the revolution banished him from England; I defy all the clergy to shew me when they ever had such success against him. My meaning is, that to think freely of the devil, is to think there is no devil at all; and he that thinks so, the devil's in him if he be afraid of the devil.

[Footnote 4: Collins is supposed to have imbibed his freethinking philosophy during his repeated visits to Holland. [S.]]

But, within these two or three years, the devil has come into England again, and Dr. Sacheverell[5] has given him commission to appear in the shape of a cat, and carry old women about upon broomsticks: And the devil has now so many "ministers ordained to his service," that they have rendered freethinking odious, and nothing but the second coming of Christ can restore it.

[Footnote 5: See note on p. 147.]

The priests tell me, I am to believe the Bible, but freethinking tells me otherwise in many particulars: The Bible says, the Jews were a nation favoured by God; but I who am a freethinker say, that cannot be, because the Jews lived in a corner of the earth, and freethinking makes it clear, that those who live in corners cannot be favourites of God. The New Testament all along asserts the truth of Christianity, but freethinking denies it; because Christianity was communicated but to a few; and whatever is communicated but to a few, cannot be true; for that is like whispering, and the proverb says, that there is no whispering without lying.

Here is a society in London for propagating freethinking throughout the world, encouraged and supported by the Queen and many others. You say, perhaps, it is for propagating the Gospel. Do you think the missionaries we send will tell the heathens that they must not think freely? No, surely; why then, it is manifest, those missionaries must be freethinkers, and make the heathens so too. But why should not the king of Siam, whose religion is heathenism and idolatry, send over a parcel of his priests to convert us to his church, as well as we send missionaries there? Both projects are exactly of a piece, and equally reasonable; and if those heathen priests were here, it would be our duty to hearken to them, and think freely whether they may not be in the right rather than we. I heartily wish a detachment of such divines as Dr Atterbury, Dr. Smallridge,[6] Dr. Swift, Dr. Sacheverell, and some others, were sent every year to the farthest part of the heathen world, and that we had a cargo of their priests in return, who would spread freethinking among us; then the war would go on, the late ministry be restored, and faction cease, which our priests inflame by haranguing upon texts, and falsely call that preaching the Gospel.

[Footnote 6: Dr. Smallridge, it will be remembered, was the gentleman who indignantly denied the authorship of "A Tale of a Tub" (see vol. i. of this edition). He became Bishop of Bristol in 1714, and died in 1719. His style was well thought of at the time. [T.S.]]

I have another project in my head, which ought to be put in execution, in order to make us freethinkers: It is a great hardship and injustice, that our priests must not be disturbed while they are prating in the pulpit. For example: Why should not William Penn the Quaker, or any Anabaptist, Papist, Muggletonian, Jew, or Sweet-Singer,[7] have liberty to come into St Paul's Church, in the midst of divine service, and endeavour to convert first the aldermen, then the preacher, and singing-men? Or pray, why might not poor Mr. Whiston,[8] who denies the divinity of Christ, be allowed to come into the Lower House of Convocation, and convert the clergy? But, alas! we are overrun with such false notions, that, if Penn or Whiston should do their duty, they would be reckoned fanatics, and disturbers of the holy synod, although they have as good a title to it as St Paul had to go into the synagogues of the Jews; and their authority is full as divine as his.

[Footnote 7: The Sweet-Singers were a fanatical sect of wailers, founded in Scotland, but which had no long life. [T.S.]] Christ himself commands us to be freethinkers; for he bids us search the scriptures, and take heed what and whom we hear; by which he plainly warns us, not to believe our bishops and clergy; for Jesus Christ, when he considered that all the Jewish and heathen priests, whose religion he came to abolish, were his enemies, rightly concluded that those appointed by him to preach his own gospel, would probably be so too; and could not be secure, that any set of priests, of the faith he delivered, would ever be otherwise; therefore it is fully demonstrated that the clergy of the Church of England are mortal enemies to Christ, and ought not to be believed.

[Footnote 8: Yet Whiston, who receives this side-cut, was himself an anxious combatant of Collins, in his "Reflections on an Anonymous Pamphlet, entitled, 'A Defence of Freethinking.'" 1713. [S.]]

But, without the privilege of freethinking, how is it possible to know which is the right Scripture? Here are perhaps twenty sorts of Scriptures in the several parts of the world, and every set of priests contend that their Scripture is the true one. The Indian Brahmins have a book of scripture called the Shaster; the Persees their Zundivastaw;[9] the Bonzes in China have theirs, written by the disciples of Fo-he, whom they call _God and Saviour of the world, who was born to teach the way of salvation, and to give satisfaction for all men's sins_: which, you see, is directly the same with what our priests pretend of Christ. And must we not think freely, to find out which are in the right, whether the Bishops or the Bonzes? But the Talapoins, or heathen clergy of Siam, approach yet nearer to the system of our priests; they have a Book of Scripture written by Sommonocodam, who, the Siamese say, was "born of a virgin," and was "the God expected by the Universe;" just as our priests tell us, that Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, and was the Messiah so long expected. The Turkish priests, or dervises, have their Scripture which they call the Alcoran. The Jews have the Old Testament for their Scripture, and the Christians have both the Old and the New. Now among all these Scriptures, there cannot above one be right; and how is it possible to know which is that, without reading them all, and then thinking freely, every one of us for ourselves, without following the advice or instruction of any guide, before we venture to choose? The parliament ought to be at the charge of finding a sufficient number of these Scriptures, for every one of Her Majesty's subjects, for there are twenty to one against us, that we may be in the wrong: But a great deal of freethinking will at last set us all right, and every one will adhere to the Scripture he likes best; by which means, religion, peace, and wealth, will be for ever secured in Her Majesty's realms.

[Footnote 9: Swift means here, of course, the Zendavesta, the commentaries on the sacred books of the Parsees. Not that Swift could have known much of these Oriental religions; but the names were good enough for his purpose. [T.S.]]

And it is the more necessary that the good people of England should have liberty to choose some other Scripture, because all Christian priests differ so much about the copies of theirs, and about the various readings of the several manuscripts, which quite destroys the authority of the Bible: for what authority can a book pretend to, where there are various readings?[10] And for this reason, it is manifest that no man can know the opinions of Aristotle or Plato, or believe the facts related by Thucydides or Livy, or be pleased with the poetry of Homer and Virgil, all which books are utterly useless, upon account of their various readings. Some books of Scripture are said to be lost, and this utterly destroys the credit of those that are left: some we reject, which the Africans and Copticks receive; and why may we not think freely, and reject the rest? Some think the scriptures wholly inspired, some partly; and some not at all. Now this is just the very case of the Bramins, Persees, Bonzes, Talapoins, Dervises, Rabbis, and all other priests, who build their religion upon books, as our priests do upon their Bibles; they all equally differ about the copies, various readings and inspirations, of their several Scriptures, and God knows which are in the right: Freethinking alone can determine it.

[Footnote 10: In the discourse on "Freethinking," p. 80, Collins insists much on a passage in Victor of Tunis, from which he infers, that the Gospels were corrected and altered in the fourth century. [S.]]

It would be endless to show in how many particulars the priests of the Heathen and Christian churches, differ about the meaning even of those Scriptures which they universally receive as sacred. But, to avoid prolixity, I shall confine myself to the different opinions among the priests of the Church of England, and here only give you a specimen, because even these are too many to be enumerated.

I have found out a bishop, (though indeed his opinions are condemned by all his brethren,) who allows the Scriptures to be so difficult, that God has left them rather as a trial of our industry than a repository of our faith, and furniture of creeds and articles of belief; with several other admirable schemes of freethinking, which you may consult at your leisure.

The doctrine of the Trinity is the most fundamental point of the whole Christian religion. Nothing is more easy to a freethinker, yet what different notions of it do the English priests pretend to deduce from Scripture, explaining it by "specific unities, eternal modes of subsistence," and the like unintelligible jargon? Nay, it is a question whether this doctrine be fundamental or no; for though Dr. South and Bishop Bull affirm it, yet Bishop Taylor and Dr. Wallis deny it.[11] And that excellent freethinking prelate, Bishop Taylor, observes, that Athanasius's example was followed with too much greediness; by which means it has happened, that the greater number of our priests are in that sentiment, and think it necessary to believe the Trinity, and incarnation of Christ.[12]

[Footnote 11: Dr. Robert South (1633-1716), rector of Islip. The reference by Swift is to his controversy with Sherlock on the doctrine of the Trinity. The two disputants got into such depths that both were charged with heresy.

Dr. George Bull (1634-1710), Bishop of St. David's, wrote the "Defensio Fidei Nicenae." For his exposition of the necessity for the belief in the divinity of the Son of God he received the thanks of Bossuet.

Dr. Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down and Connor (1613-1667), and author of "Holy Living" and "Holy Dying," wrote also "Unum Necessarium, or the Doctrine and Practice of Repentance." His treatment, in this work, of the doctrine of original sin was considered heterodox by Bishop Warner and Dr. Sanderson, and a controversy ensued, in the course of which Taylor was imprisoned in Chepstow Castle on a charge of being concerned in a Royalist insurrection.

Dr. John Wallis (1616-1703), here referred to, is the famous mathematician and divine, and one of the original members of the Royal Society. He is mentioned in the text by Swift because of a work he published on the Trinity, which brought him into collision with the Arians. But the Doctor seems to have been addicted to views of a controversial nature, for his opinions on infant baptism and the keeping of the Sabbath found many objectors. He was Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford in 1648. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 12: See Swift's opinion of controversies on this subject in his "Sermon upon the Trinity." [S.]]

Our priests likewise dispute several circumstances about the resurrection of the dead, the nature of our bodies after the resurrection, and in what manner they shall be united to our souls. They also attack one another "very weakly with great vigour," about predestination. And it is certainly true, (for Bishop Taylor and Mr. Whiston the Socinian say so,) that all churches in prosperity alter their doctrines every age, and are neither satisfied with themselves, nor their own confessions; neither does any clergyman of sense believe the Thirty-nine Articles.