a party.”  It is plain he can from his principles intend no others, but the legislators of the Sacramental Test; though at the same time I freely own, that this is a vile description of them:  For neither have they by this law, made the Sacramental Test an engine to advance, but rather to depress a state faction, nor have they made any arbitrary enclosures, of the communion table of our Lord, since as many as please, may receive the Sacrament with us in our churches; and those who will not, may freely, as before, receive it in their separate congregations:  Nor in the last place, is religion hereby debased, to serve mean and unworthy purposes; nor is it any more than all lawgivers do, by enjoining an oath of allegiance, and making that a religious test.  For an oath is an act of religious worship as well as the Eucharist.

[Footnote 6:  Scott remarks that “Mr. Boyse is here and in other places, spoken of as alive, which was the case, I presume, when the tract first appeared in ‘The Correspondent.’” The tract, however, was printed in the periodical in 1733, and Boyse died in 1728.  It may be that when Swift first wrote “The Narrative,” Mr. Boyse was alive; in that case its date must be put down to an earlier year than either 1733 or even 1731.  Or it may be that the style of so referring to Boyse was used for an argumentative effect, to appeal to any reader who was in sympathy with Boyse’s opinions. [T.S.]]

Upon the whole, is not this an instance of prodigious boldness in Mr. Boyse, backed with only five dissenting teachers, thus to recriminate upon the Irish House of Lords (as they were pleased to call them in the title of their printed address,) and almost to insist with her Majesty, upon the repeal of a law, which she had stamped with her royal authority, but a few years before?

The[7] next instance, of the resolution of the dissenters, against this law, was the attempt made during the government of the Duke of Shrewsbury.[8]

[Footnote 7:  From this paragraph to the end is taken from “The Correspondent,” No. iv.  The text as given by Scott is considerably altered from that which appeared in the periodical. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 8:  From September, 1713, until the Queen’s death in 1714. [T.S.]]

This attack was by the whole compacted body, of their teachers and elders, with a formidable engine, called a “representation of grievances,” in which, after they had reviled the Test Act, with the same odious appellations, and insisted upon the same insolent arguments, for the repeal thereof, which they had formerly urged to the Queen:  They expressed themselves to his Grace in these words: 

“We beg leave to say, that those persons must be inexcusable, and chargeable, with all the bad consequences that may follow, who in such a kingdom as this, disable, disgrace, and divide Protestants; a thing that ought not to be done at any time, or in any place, much less than in this,” &c.