Jonathan Swift’s Exhortation for Two

While primarily known today as the author of Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift also served as an Anglican priest in his home country of Ireland. While his writing gained significant traction throughout Britain, his ministry was not quite so successful.

While serving a small parish in Laracor, Ireland in 1709, the author and clergyman regularly drew less than a dozen souls to Sunday worship. His prayer meetings were even less well received, where he could only depend on a “congregation of one,” his clerk and bell-ringer Roger Cox. It was remembered that he began one such service, “Dearly beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth you and me in sundry places …’