I return from this digression to the modest demands of the Presbyterians for a repeal of the Sacramental Test, as a reward for their merits at the Restoration and the Revolution; which merits I have fairly represented as well as my memory will allow me.  If I have committed any mistakes they must be of little moment.  The facts and principal circumstances are what I have obtained and digested, from reading the histories of those times, written by each party; and many thousands have done the same as well as I, who I am sure have in their minds drawn the same conclusions.

This is the faction, and these the men, who are now resuming their applications, and giving in their bills of merit to both kingdoms upon two points, which of all others, they have the least pretensions to offer.  I have collected the facts with all possible impartiality, from the current histories of those times; and have shewn, although very briefly, the gradual proceedings of those sectaries under the denomination of Puritans, Presbyterians, and Independents, for about the space of an hundred and eighty years, from the beginning of Queen Elizabeth to this present time.  But, notwithstanding all that can be said, these very schismatics (for such they are in temporals as well as spirituals) are now again expecting, soliciting, and demanding, (not without insinuating threats, according to their custom) that the Parliament should fix them upon an equal foot with the Church established.  I would fain know to what branch of the legislature they can have the forehead to apply.  Not to my lords the bishops; who must have often read, how the predecessors of this very faction, acting upon the same principles, drove the whole bench out of the house; who were then, and hitherto continue one of the three estates.  Not to the temporal peers, the second of the three estates; who must have heard, that, immediately after those rebellious fanatics had murdered their king, they voted a House of Lords to be useless and dangerous, and would let them sit no longer, otherwise than when elected as commoners:  Not to the House of Commons; who must have heard, that in those fanatic times the Presbyterian and Independent commanders in the army, by military power, expelled all the moderate men out of the house, and left a Rump to govern the nation.  Lastly, not to the Crown, which those very saints destined to rule the earth, trampled under their feet, and then in cold blood murdered the blessed wearer.

But, the session now approaching, and a clan of dissenting teachers being come up to town from their northern headquarters, accompanied by many of their elders and agents, and supported by a general contribution, to solicit their establishment, with a capacity of holding all military as well as civil employments; I think it high time, that this paper should see the light.  However, I cannot conclude without freely confessing, that if the Presbyterians should obtain their ends, I could not be sorry to find them mistaken in the point which they have most at heart by the repeal of the Test; I mean the benefit of employments.  For, after all, what assurance can a Scottish northern dissenter, born on Irish ground, have, that he shall be treated with as much favour as a true Scot born beyond the Tweed?