Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/200

188 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.

Upon the whole, is not this an instance of prodigious boldness in Jo. 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 the law, which she had stamped with her royal authority but a few years before?

The next attempt of the dissenters against this law was made during the government of the duke of Shrewsbury, 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, and at such a time as this, disable, disgrace, and divide protestants; a thing that ought not to be done at any time, or in any place, much less then in this," &c.

Is it possible to conceive any thing more provoking than this humble supplication of these remonstrators? Does