narchy yet unrenounced, might, if they would please to look deep enough into their own hearts, prove a more bitter test, than any other that the law has yet invented.

For, from the first time that these sectaries appeared in the world, it has been always found, by their whole proceedings, that they professed an utter hatred to kingly government. I can recollect at present three civil establishments, where calvinists, and some other refor mers who rejected episcopacy, possess the supreme power; and these are all republics; I mean Holland, Geneva, and the reformed Swiss cantons. I do not say this in diminution or disgrace to commonwealths: wherein I confess I have much altered many opinions under which I was educated, having been led by some observation, long experience, and a thorough detestation for the corruptions of mankind: insomuch that I am now justly liable to the censure of Hobbes, who complains, that the youth of England imbibe ill opinions from reading the histories of ancient Greece and Rome, those renowned scenes of liberty and every virtue.

But as to monarchs, who must be supposed well to stu dy and understand their own interest; they will best consider, whether those people, who in all their actions, preachings, and writings, have openly declared themselves against regal power, are to be safely placed in an equal degree of favour and trust, with those, who have been always found the true and only friends to the English establishment. From which consideration, I could have added one more article to my new test, if I had thought it worth my time.

I have been assured by some persons who were present, that several of these dissenting teachers, upon their first arrival hither* to solicit the repeal of the test, were

'Arrival hither,' is not English; it should be arrival here.' 8:

pleased to express their gratitude by publicly drinking the healths of certain eminent patrons, whom they pretend to have found among us. If this be true, and that the test must be delivered up by the very superiors appointed to defend it; the affair is already in fact at an end. What secret reasons those patrons may have given for such a return of brotherly love, I shall not inquire: for O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united. For, in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they digged down a wall. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce, and their wrath, for it was cruel. I will di vide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel,"

A NARRATIVE

OF THE

SEVERAL ATTEMPTS

WHICH THE

DISSENTERS OF IRELAND HAVE MADE,

FOR A

REPEAL OF THE SACRAMENTAL TEST;

HUMBLY INSCRIBED TO THE CONFORMING NOBILITY AND GENTRY OF IRELAND, 1731.*

WHEN the oath of supremacy was repealed, which had been the church's great security, since the second of Queen Elizabeth, against both papists and presbyterians, who equally refused it, it let in such a current of

*This little tract was originally printed at Dublin in a periodical paper called "The Correspondent." It was annexed to the second edition of the Presbyterian Plea of Merit; and, to make room for it, an Ode to Humphry French, Esq. which stood in the first edition, was omitted in the second.-It may not be improper to observe, that it was answered, in "A Vindication of the Protestant Dissenters from the Aspersions cast upon them in a late pamphlet, entitled, the Presbyterian's Plea of Merit, &c. with some Remarks on a paper called The Correspondent, giving a pretended Narrative," &c. N.

dissenters into some of our corporations, as bore down all before them.

Although the sacramental test had been for a considerable time in force in England, yet that law did not reach Ireland, where the church was more oppressed by dissenters, and where her most sanguine friends were glad to compound, to preserve what legal security she had left, rather than attempt any new, or even to recover what she had lost and in truth they had no reason to expect it, at a time when the dissenters had the interest to have a motion made and debated in parliament, that there might be a temporary repeal of all the penal laws against them; and when they were so flushed with the conquest they had made in some corporations, as to reject all overtures of a toleration; and, to that end, had employed Mr. Boyse to write against it with the utmost contempt, calling it "a stone instead of bread, a serpent instead of a fish."

When the church was in this situation, the clause of the sacramental test was happily sent over from England, tacked to the popery bill; which alarmed the whole body of the dissenters to that degree, that their managers began to ply with the greatest artifice and industry, to prevent its passing into a law. But (to the honour of that parliament be it spoken) the whole body of both lords and commons (some few excepted) passed the clause with great readiness, and defended it afterwards with as great resolution.

The immediate consequence of this law was the recovery of several corporations from the dissenters, and the preservation of others, to which the enterprising people had made very bold and quick approaches.

It was hoped that this signal defeat would have discouraged the dissenters from any farther attempts against the law, which had so unanimously passed both houses;

but the contrary soon appeared; for, upon meeting of the parliament held by the Earl of Pembroke,* they quickly reassumed their wonted courage and confidence, and made no doubt but they should either procure an absolute repeal thereof, or get it so far relaxed, as that they might be admitted to offices of military trust; to this they apprehended themselves encouraged by a paragraph in his excellency's speech to both houses (which they applied to themselves) which was, "that the queen: would be glad of any expedient, for strengthening the interest of her protestant subjects of Ireland."

The advocates for the dissenters immediately took hold of this handle; and, in order to prepare the way for this expedient, insisting boldly upon their merit and loyalty, charged the church with persecution, and ex-: tolled their signal behaviour in the late revolution to that degree, as if by their singular prowess they had: saved the nation.

But all this was only to prepare the way for the grand engine, which was forming to beat down this law; and that was their expedient addresses.

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The first of this kind was, from a provincial synod of the northern dissenters, beginning with high encomiums upon themselves, and as high demands from the public, “for their untainted loyalty in all turns of government, which," they said, was the natural consequence of their known principles;" expressions, which, had they been applied to them by their adversaries, must have been understood as spoken ironically; and, indeed, to have been the greatest sarcasm imaginable upon them (especially when we consider the insolent treatment given to her late majesty in the very same address ;) for, immediately after they pass this compliment upon them

*His viceroyalty commenced April 7, 1707. N.

A