Chapter 21 - Sermons

Summary

During his long professional career as a clergyman in the Church of Ireland, Swift was obliged to preach sermons. This chapter analyses the dozen sermons attributed to him that have been preserved. Sermon culture in Swift’s lifetime was strongly politicised and Swift, like other preachers, took sides. He was a partisan polemical divine. His extant sermons inveigh against Protestant dissenters, rebellion, faction, regicide, fanaticism, and disobedience. While doctrinally orthodox and written in the plain style of contemporary Anglican homiletics, this chapter argues that Swift’s sermons are nevertheless idiosyncratic, occasionally strange and sometimes even amusing performances.