DR. J. SWIFT, IN THE YEAR 1732.

[RELATING TO THE SACRAMENTAL TEST.]

    Very proper to be read (at this Time) by every Member of the
    Established Church.

NOTE.

The text of this tract is based on that of the original broadside, collated with those given by Faulkner and Scott.  In 1733 was also published a broadside with the title:  “Queries upon the Demand of the Presbyterians to have the Sacramental Test repealed at this Session of Parliament.”  These queries seem to be based on those by Swift, though they are not quite the same.

[T.S.]

  QUAERIES WROTE BY DR. J. SWIFT,
  IN THE YEAR 1732.

QUERY.

Whether hatred and violence between parties in a state be not more inflamed by different views of interest, than by the greater or lesser differences between them, either in religion or government?

Whether it be any part of the question, at this time, which of the two religions is worse, Popery, or Fanaticism; or not rather, which of the two, (having both the same good will) is in the hopefullest condition to ruin the Church?

Whether the sectaries, whenever they come to prevail, will not ruin the Church as infallibly and effectually as the Papists?

Whether the prevailing sectaries could allow liberty of conscience to Dissenters, without belying all their former practice, and almost all their former writings?

Whether many hundred thousand Scotch Presbyterians, are not full as virulent against the Episcopal Church, as they are against the Papists; or, as they would have us think, the Papists are against them?

Whether the Dutch, who are most distinguished for allowing liberty of conscience, do ever admit any persons, who profess a different scheme of worship from their own, into civil employments; although they may be forced by the nature of their government, to receive mercenary troops of all religions?

Whether the Dissenters ever pretended, until of late years, to desire more than a bare toleration?

Whether, if it be true, what a sorry pamphleteer asserts, who lately writ for repealing the Test, that the Dissenters in this kingdom are equally numerous with the Churchmen:  It would not be a necessary point of prudence, by all proper and lawful means to prevent their further increase?

The great argument given by those whom they call Low Church men, to justify the large tolerations allowed to Dissenters, hath been; that by such indulgencies, the rancour of those sectaries would gradually wear off, many of them would come over to us, and their parties, in a little time, crumble to nothing.

QUERY.

If what the above pamphleteer asserts, that the sectaries, are in equal numbers with conformists, it doth not clearly follow, that those repeated tolerations, have operated directly contrary to what those Low Church politicians pretended to foresee and expect.