OBrian's celebrated Irish sermon

This virulently anti-Catholic, anticlerical piece was written by William O’Brien (d. 1815), an English actor and dramatist who began his stage career under David Garrick in the 1750s. The “sermon” was published in O’Brien’s Lusorium; Being a Collection of Convivial Songs, Lectures, &c. Entirely Original, in Various Styles (75-79). “O’Briens’ Sermons,” probably an edition of the Lusorium, was offered for sale in New York in 1804 by Peter Burtsell in an advertisement that ran in fifty-two issues of The Daily Advertiser (May 5-August 9, 1804). This particular text was apparently so popular that it was issued as a broadside as O’Brien’s Irish Sermon; or, Roman Catholic Mass-house Lecture, Addressed to ****, and Delivered in the Character of an Irish Priest.[1] The strong anti-Irish sentiment in Boston must have made the sheet appealing to some of Coverly’s customers.

Perhaps in response to local sensibilities, a few phrases were changed for Coverly’s edition. A reference to the Methodists (“you’ll all be damn’d for it as the Methodists say, whether or not”) was deleted completely in the second paragraph and the references in the third paragraph to “makes water on” and “feeling of the girls knees” originally were the more graphic “pisses upon” and “poking of your fist up the girl’s petticoats.”