attention, their tithes. They also have the pious ambition to aim at
superiority.

Moreover, they inspire very religiously their flock with a holy zeal
against Dissenters of all denominations. This zeal was pretty violent
under the Tories in the four last years of Queen Anne; but was productive
of no greater mischief than the breaking the windows of some
meeting-houses and the demolishing of a few of them. For religious rage
ceased in England with the civil wars, and was no more under Queen Anne
than the hollow noise of a sea whose billows still heaved, though so long
after the storm when the Whigs and Tories laid waste their native
country, in the same manner as the Guelphs and Ghibelins formerly did
theirs. It was absolutely necessary for both parties to call in religion
on this occasion; the Tories declared for Episcopacy, and the Whigs, as
some imagined, were for abolishing it; however, after these had got the
upper hand, they contented themselves with only abridging it.

At the time when the Earl of Oxford and the Lord Bolingbroke used to
drink healths to the Tories, the Church of England considered those
noblemen as the defenders of its holy privileges. The lower House of
Convocation (a kind of House of Commons) composed wholly of the clergy,
was in some credit at that time; at least the members of it had the
liberty to meet, to dispute on ecclesiastical matters, to sentence
impious books from time to time to the flames, that is, books written
against themselves. The Ministry which is now composed of Whigs does not
so much as allow those gentlemen to assemble, so that they are at this
time reduced (in the obscurity of their respective parishes) to the
melancholy occupation of praying for the prosperity of the Government
whose tranquillity they would willingly disturb. With regard to the
bishops, who are twenty-six in all, they still have seats in the House of