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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: wherein the opposition of sectaries among us consists. We shall
find Christianity to have no share in it at all. Does the Gospel
anywhere prescribe a starched, squeezed countenance, a stiff formal
gait, a singularity of manners and habit, or any affected forms and
modes of speech different from the reasonable part of mankind?
Yet, if Christianity did not lend its name to stand in the gap, and
to employ or divert these humours, they must of necessity be spent
in contraventions to the laws of the land, and disturbance of the
public peace. There is a portion of enthusiasm assigned to every
nation, which, if it hath not proper objects to work on, will burst
out, and set all into a flame. If the quiet of a State can be
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