Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/199

Rh and danger, and should have the same infamy put upon them with the Irish papists. We therefore humbly hope, that your majesty shall consider, how little real grounds there are for those complaints made by their lordships."

What a mixture of impudence and prevarication is this! That one dissenting teacher, accused to his prince of having censured the legislature, should presume, backed only by five more of the same quality and profession, to transcribe the guilty paragraph, and (to secure his meaning from all possibility of being mistaken) annex another to it; wherein they rail at that very law for which he in so audacious a manner censured the queen and parliament, and at the same time should expect to be acquitted by her majesty because he had not mentioned the word legislature. It is true, the word legislature is not expressed in that paragraph; but let Mr. Boyse say, what other power but the legislature could, in this sense, "turn the holy Eucharist into an engine to advance a state faction, or confine offices of trust, or the communion table of our Lord, by their arbitrary enclosures, to 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 common table of the 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 ligion