man, instead of defending the Essay, seems to have defeated its principal intention, misrepresented its author, and reduced his whole book to an absurdity. Another method of this writer, almost as hurtful to the cause he has undertaken as the former, is to assert what he cannot possibly know to be true, even supposing it were so, and what the world must know to be false. Upon the publication of the Essay, and to prevent in some measure (as the Editor expresses himself) the evil effects of that treatise, a justly celebrated discourse on the Trinity, by the late Dean Swift, was reprinted in Ireland. This discourse, the author now before us has assaulted with a great degree of prejudice and animosity; and after he has sifted some absurd and contradictory senses out of its expressions, and treated his lordship of Orrery, and other able and learned gentlemen, with great contempt for not having skill enough to make the same discovery, confidently affirms, that he has "shewn the Dean to "have been an Arian in his heart." Now, if the Dean has been so unhappy in his expressions, as to subscribe himself an Arian, while he meant to declare himself a Catholic, he must surely have wanted common sense, a defect, which (in his day) he was farther from than most men living: if in his expressions ¿ Page 32. |