The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. — Volume 04 - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church — Volume 2 by Jonathan Swift
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page 22 of 383 (05%)
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are indifferent to all religion in general, or lastly such who affect to
bear a personal rancour toward the clergy: These last are a set of men not of our own growth, their principles at least have been imported of late years; yet this whole party put together will not, I am confident, amount to above fifty men in Parliament, which can hardly be worked up into a majority of three hundred. [Footnote 15: The passage beginning with "I remember when I was last in England," and ending with "within our definition," is omitted by Faulkner. [T.S.]] As to the House of Lords, the difficulty there is conceived at least as great as in ours. So many of our temporal peers live in England, that the bishops are generally pretty near a par of the House, and we reckon they will be all to a man against repealing the Test; and yet their lordships are generally thought as good Whigs upon our principles as any in the kingdom. There are indeed a few lay lords who appear to have no great devotion for Episcopacy; and perhaps one or two more with whom certain powerful motives might be used for removing any difficulty whatsoever; but these are in no sort of a number to carry any point against the conjunction of the rest and the whole bench of bishops. Besides, the whole body of our clergy is utterly against repealing the Test, though they are entirely devoted to her Majesty, and hardly one in a hundred who are not very good Whigs in our acceptation of the word. And I must let you know, that we of Ireland are not yet come up to other folk's refinements; for we generally love and esteem our clergy, and think they deserve it; nay, we are apt to lay some weight upon their opinion, and would not willingly disoblige them, at least unless it were upon some greater point of interest than this. And their judgment in the |
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