John Phillips’ anonymous poem, _A Satyr Against Hypocrites_, was entered in the Stationers’ Register on March 14, 1654-55 as the work of his brother Edward and the property of his publisher Nathaniel Brook, and it was probably published on August 17 (David Masson, _The Life of John Milton_ [London, 1877], V, 228n., cites the “Thomason copy” as indicating the date of publication). Actually, two issues appeared in 1655. One gave no indication of the publisher and is reproduced here, as perhaps the rarest, from the copy in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. The other was “Printed for N.B. at the Angel in Corn-hill.” The 1655 text was reprinted in 1661 as _The Religion of the Hypocritical Presbyterians in Meeter_, and a revised and enlarged edition appeared in 1671 under the original title. It was this rather than the original version which is known through the summary given by William Godwin (_Lives of Edward and John Phillips_ [London, 1815], pp. 49-51) and quoted by Masson as the most “exact description” possible of the 1655 “performance” (_ibid._, V, 228). Other editions have been recorded for 1674, 1677, 1680, 1689, and 1710, the last being attributed to the author’s uncle, John Milton. Of these, the editions which I have seen show only minor revisions of the 1671 text. A holograph manuscript, preserved in the Bodleian Library, includes a two-page dedication to the successful barrister John Churchill, but the dedication was apparently never printed. Neither the unpublished dedication nor the poem itself contains a clear indication of the purpose or the direction of the satire. In pleading her case for John Phillips’ authorship of the anonymous life of Milton, Miss Helen Derbyshire (_The Early Lives of Milton_ [London, 1932], pp. xxii-xxv) has taken issue with the common statement that it marked Phillips’ departure from his uncle’s teachings and has described it as a satire against the Presbyterians from an Independent position with which Milton might well have sympathized. Yet the text hardly supports these contentions. The Sunday service which Phillips burlesques shows no signs of Presbyterian discipline. In fact, sectarianism is almost at its worst in his picture of a congregation crying destruction against Covenant-breakers, making grinning appeals for free grace, and screaming for the Fifth Monarchy in a state of revelation-madness. Furthermore, the Brother Elnathan who makes his appearance at the dinner following the Wednesday service received his name in a Baptist “Ducking-pond” rather than from the customary Presbyterian sprinkling. There may be some significance, too, in the fact that the particularly satiric reference to “the man midwife,” Dr. Peter Chamberlain, was to a noted Independent.