Ignorance may perhaps be the mother of superstition; but experience hath not proved it to be so of devotion: for Christianity always made the most easy and quickest progress in civilized countries. I mention this because it is affirmed that the clergy are in most credit where ignorance prevails (and surely this kingdom would be called the paradise of clergymen if that opinion were true) for which they instance England in the times of Popery. But whoever knows anything of three or four centuries before the Reformation, will find the little learning then stirring was more equally divided between the English clergy and laity than it is at present. There were several famous lawyers in that period, whose writings are still in the highest repute, and some historians and poets who were not of the Church.[12] Whereas now-a-days our education is so corrupted, that you will hardly find a young person of quality with the least tincture of knowledge, at the same time that many of the clergy were never more learned, or so scurvily treated. Here among us, at least, a man of letters out of the three professions, is almost a prodigy. And those few who have preserved any rudiments of learning are (except perhaps one or two smatterers) the clergy's friends to a man: and I dare appeal to any clergyman in this kingdom, whether the greatest dunce in the parish be not always the most proud, wicked, fraudulent, and intractable of his flock.
[Footnote 12: What Swift calls learning was, in his day, the property, so to speak, of professional men, such as divines, lawyers, and university teachers. The common man was too poor or too much taxed to acquire it; the aristocrat often too lazy or too fond of pleasure-seeking to bother about it. The Pre-Reformation days, to which Swift refers, could boast such men as Fabyan, Hall, Chaucer, Gower, and Caxton, as well as Lord Berners, Sir Thomas More, and Lydgate, who were not, in any sense, professional men. [T.S.]
I think the clergy have almost given over perplexing themselves and their hearers with abstruse points of Predestination, Election, and the like; at least it is time they should; and therefore I shall not trouble you further upon this head.
I have now said all I could think convenient with relation to your conduct in the pulpit: your behaviour in life[13] is another scene, upon which I shall readily offer you my thoughts, if you appear to desire them from me by your approbation of what I have here written; if not, I have already troubled you too much.
[Footnote 13: Scott and Hawkesworth print "your behaviour in the world."
The above is the reading of the first edition. [T. S.]
I am, Sir,
Your Affectionate
Friend and Servant
A.B.
January 9th.
1719-20.
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