SERMONS: 

On Mutual Subjection

On the Testimony of Conscience

On the Trinity

On Brotherly Love

On the Difficulty of Knowing One’s Self

On False Witness

On the Wisdom of this World

On Doing Good

On the Martyrdom of King Charles I

On the Poor Man’s Contentment

On the Wretched Condition of Ireland

On Sleeping in Church

APPENDICES: 

I. Remarks on Dr. Gibbs’s Paraphrase of the Psalms

II.  Proposal for Preventing the further Growth of Popery

III.  Swift and Serjeant Bettesworth

IV.  A True and Faithful Narrative of what passed in London

INDEX TO THE WRITINGS ON RELIGION AND THE CHURCH

NOTE.

The portrait which forms the frontispiece to this volume is taken, by permission, from the painting in the possession of the Earl of Howth, K.P.

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

A LETTER

FROM A MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN IRELAND TO

A MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN ENGLAND

CONCERNING THE

Sacramental test.

Written in the year 1708.

NOTE.

In the “foreword” to the reprint of this tract in the “Miscellanies” of 1711, Swift remarks:  “I have been assured that the suspicion which the supposed author lay under for writing this letter absolutely ruined him with the late ministry.”  The “late ministry” was the Whig ministry of which Godolphin was the Premier.  To this ministry the repeal of the Test Act was a matter of much concern.  To test the effect of such a repeal it was determined to try it in Ireland first.  There the Presbyterians had distinguished themselves by their loyalty to William and the Protestant succession.  These, therefore, offered a good excuse for the introduction of such a measure, particularly when, in 1708, an invasion was rumoured, they were the first to send in loyal addresses to the Queen.  Swift likened this method to “that of a discreet physician, who first gives a new medicine to a dog, before he prescribes it to a human creature.”  Further, the Speaker of the Irish House had come over to England to agitate for the repeal.  On this matter Swift wrote to Archbishop King, under date April 15th (the letter was first published by Mr. John Forster in his “Life of Swift,” p. 246), as follows:  “Some days ago my Lord Somers entered with me into discourse about the Test clause, and desired my opinion upon it, which I gave him truly, though with all the gentleness