can do to supplant each other in the favor of their prince.

Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth,
and of the perfidy of courts, this is most undoubtedly true that
shepherds and ministers are both men; their nature and passions the same,
the modes of them only different.

Having mentioned commonplace observations, I will particularly caution
you against either using, believing, or approving them. They are the
common topics of witlings and coxcombs; those, who really have wit, have
the utmost contempt for them, and scorn even to laugh at the pert things
that those would-be wits say upon such subjects.

Religion is one of their favorite topics; it is all priest-craft; and an
invention contrived and carried on by priests of all religions, for their
own power and profit; from this absurd and false principle flow the
commonplace, insipid jokes, and insults upon the clergy. With these
people, every priest, of every religion, is either a public or a
concealed unbeliever, drunkard, and whoremaster; whereas, I conceive,
that priests are extremely like other men, and neither the better nor the
worse for wearing a gown or a surplice: but if they are different from
other people, probably it is rather on the side of religion and morality,
or, at least, decency, from their education and manner of life.

Another common topic for false wit, and cool raillery, is matrimony.
Every man and his wife hate each other cordially, whatever they may
pretend, in public, to the contrary. The husband certainly wishes his
wife at the devil, and the wife certainly cuckolds her husband. Whereas,
I presume, that men and their wives neither love nor hate each other the
more, upon account of the form of matrimony which has been said over