upon battering down a sort of independent power in the clergy; which few or none of them ever claimed or defended. But there being certain peculiarities in this preface, that very much set off the wit, the learning, the raillery, reasoning, and sincerity of the author; I shall take notice of some of them, as I pass. ——
But here, I hope, it will not be expected, that I should bestow remarks upon every passage in this book, that is liable to exception for ignorance, falsehood, dulness, or malice. Where he is so insipid, that nothing can be struck out for the reader's entertainment, I shall observe Horace's rule:
Quæ desperes tractata nitescere posse, relinquas.
Upon which account I shall say nothing of that great instance of his candour and judgment in relation to Dr. Stillingfleet, who (happening to lie under his displeasure upon the fatal test of imperium in imperio) is high church and Jacobite, took the oaths of allegiance to save him from the gallows[1], and subscribed the articles only to keep his preferment: whereas the character of that prelate is universally known to have been directly the reverse of what this writer gives him.
But, before he can attempt to ruin this damnable opinion of two independent powers, he tells us,
- ↑ Page 5, he quotes bishop Stillingfleet's vindication of the doctrine of the Trinity, where the bishop says, that a man might be very right in the belief of an article, though mistaken in the explication of it. Upon which Tindal observes: "These men treat the articles as they do the oath of allegiance, which, they say, obliges them not actually to assist the government, but to do nothing against it; that is, nothing that would bring them to the gallows."
