Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/214

206 Therefore I desire you will give me leave to reason with you a little upon the subject; lest your compliance, or inadvertency, should put you upon what you may have cause to repent of, as long as you live.

You know very well, the great business of the high flying whigs, at this juncture, is, to endeavour a repeal of the test clause. You know likewise that the moderate men, both of high and low church, profess to be wholly averse from this design, as thinking it beneath the policy of common gardeners, to cut down the only hedge that shelters from the north. Now I will put the case: If the person to whom you have promised your vote, be one, of whom you have the least apprehension, that he will promote or assent to the repealing of that clause, whether it be decent or proper he should be the mouth of an assembly, whereof a very great majority pretend to abhor his opinion! Can a body, whose mouth and heart must go so contrariwise, ever act with sincerity, or hardly with consistency? Such a man is no proper vehicle to retain or convey the sense of the house, which, in so many points of the greatest moment, will be directly contrary to his. It is full as absurd, as to prefer a man to a bishoprick, who denies revealed religion. But it may possibly be a great deal worse. What if the person, you design to vote into that important post, should not only be a declared enemy of the sacramental test, but should prove to be a solicitor, and encourager, or even a penner of addresses to complain of it? Do you think it so indifferent a thing, that a promise of course, the effect of compliance, importunity, shame of refusing, or any the like motive, shall oblige you past the power of retracting? Perhaps