Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/68

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54
LEARNED COMMENT ON

thou their offering: I have not taken one ass from them, neither have I hurt one of them[1]." And to the same purpose Samuel, "Whose ox have I taken? or whose ass have I taken? or whom have I defrauded? whom have I oppressed? or of whose hand have I received any bribe to blind mine eyes with? and I will restore it you[2]!" Does the British Moses speak thus to the people? is there any sort of agreement between them? Nor are we sure of God's commands to go up against the Amorites, p. 69, as the Israelites were; and we have fifty times more reason to murmur. They were carried from the wilderness, "into a land flowing with milk and honey;" we from such a land into the wilderness, that is poverty and misery, and are like to be kept in the wilderness till this generation and the next too are consumed, by mortgages, anticipations, &c.

P. 71. Where the doctor says, "the country itself was much too narrow for them," he must certainly mean the Dutch, who never think their frontiers can be too much extended.

The doctor tells us, p. 72, "The justice and necessity of our cause is little short of the force of a command." Did God command to fight, because the chaplain general will have no peace? He asks, "what is bidding us go on, if our successes are not?" At this rate, whenever any new success is gained, or a town taken, no peace must be made. The whole exhortation against peace, which follows, is very proper for the chaplain of an army; it looks like another Essay of the Management of the War. "These successes have generally been so much

  1. Numb. xvi, 15.
  2. 1 Sam. xii, 3.
" wanted