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Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/206

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194
ATTEMPTS OF THE DISSENTERS

that they will be but poorly supported by them; that by the continuance of the test, their craft will be in danger to be set at naught, and in all probability will end in a general conformity of the presbyterians to the established church. So that they have the strongest reasons in the world to press for a repeal of the test; but those reasons must have equal force for the continuance of it with all that wish the peace of the church and state, and would not have us torn in pieces with endless and causeless divisions.

There is one short passage more I had like to have omitted, which our author leaves as a sting in the tail of his libel; his words are these, p. 59. "The truth is, no one party of a religious denomination, in Britain or Ireland, were so united as they (the dissenters,) indeed no one but they, in an inviolable attachment to the protestant succession." To detect the folly of this assertion, I subjoin the following letter, from a person of known integrity, and inviolably attached to the protestant succession as any dissenter in the kingdom; I mean, Mr. Warreng of Warrengstown, then a member of parliament, and commissioner of array in the county of Down, upon the expected invasion of the pretender. This letter was writ in a short time after the array of the militia; for the truth of which I refer to Mr. Warreng himself:

"Sir, That I may fulfil your desire, by giving you an account how the dissenters in my neighbourhood behaved themselves, when we were threatened with an invasion of the pretender; be pleased to know, that, upon an alarm given of his being landed near Derry, none were more

" zealous