Published in the same year as the London edition. Browne also published a shorter work, Of drinking in remembrance of the dead, in 1713.
A controversial treatise on drinking “healths” (or toasts) which Browne argued was tantamount to prayer.
Peter Brown (d.1735), Church of Ireland bishop of Cork and Ross examines the practice of drinking health in detail and likens the practice at one point to witchcraft with the a toast wishing ill (or even death on someone) becoming a form of “enchantment”:
“Besides the Danger and impious Nature of this sort of Health-Drinking, ‘tis strange Men do not see the unaccountable Folly of it, how they are pleas’d only in the Conceit; and with Hanging and Drawing, and Tormenting other People, as Witches do in Effigy. They hurt no body but themselves, for a wet Curse will never prevail upon any but those who drink it: And what strange Inchantment can there be in Saying or Meaning, As I drink this Glass of Wine, so let another Man perish; certainly this can have no Real Effect upon him, tho’ it carry in it a near Affinity with Witchcraft and Diabolical *Combination.”* (p.19)
“…concerns over Browne’s supposed Jacobitism surfaced in the lengthy controversy over drinking healths to the dead. Although colleagues on the bench advised against it Browne published his objections and continued to air his opinions on the matter until 1722. He objected because such invocations mimicked the eucharist and were tantamount to sacrilege. His opponents felt that he was belittling the memory of William III, the subject of the toasts, and with him the principles of the 1688–9 revolution.” (ODNB)
