“The Frenchman first in literary fame;
Mention him, if you please. Voltaire? The same.
...
The Scripture was his jest-book, whence he drew
Bon-mots to gall the Christian and the Jew:
An infidel when well, but what when sick?
Oh, then a text would touch him to the quick.”
Swift gives a satirical narrative of “what passed in London during the general consternation of all ranks and degrees of mankind” on account of the predicted destruction of the world by a comet, on a given day. Friday was the declared day; and during Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, public bewilderment and terror are described as extreme—the churches crowded, and thousands praying in the public streets. At length Friday came. But as the day wore on, popular fears began to abate, then lessened every hour; “at night they were almost extinct, till the total darkness that hitherto used to terrify, now comforted every freethinker and atheist. Great numbers went together to the taverns, bespoke suppers, and broke up whole hogsheads for joy. The subject of all wit and conversation was to ridicule the prophecy and rally each other. All the quality and gentry were perfectly ashamed, nay, some utterly disowned that they had manifested any signs of religion.
“But the next day, even the common people, as well as their betters, appeared in their usual state of indifference. They drank, they swore, they lied, they cheated, they quarrelled, they murdered. In short, the world went on in the old channel.”
To apply what Butler says of “saints” in his application of the word, as a cant term then of political significance: