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There is little greater edification in the crowd of excited clergymen who collected in the Jerusalem Chamber, than in the medley throng which huzzaed round Westminster Hall and behind the wheels of Sacheverell's chariot.
Dr. Sacheverell's counsel defended him on this principle, namely, that, whilst he enforced from the pulpit the general doctrine of non-resistance, he was not obliged to take notice of the theoretic limits which ought to modify that doctrine.
During the course of Sacheverell's trial, the government advocate, in order to establish the true Whig doctrine, calumniated by the Doctor, uttered words which seemed revolutionary to the royal ears.
The virulence of the abuse would have defeated its aim had not the general sense of the people condemned the maintenance of the war, and encouraged Anne to free herself from the yoke beneath which she had bent so long. At the close of Sacheverell's trial she broke with the Duchess.
Sacheverell's "bloody flag and banner of defiance," and other High-flying truculencies, had furnished him with the main basis of his Shortest Way with the Dissenters. The laugh of the populace was then on Defoe's side, partly, perhaps, because the Government had prosecuted him.
Sir Robert Howard immediately moved that every person who, being under Sacheverell's clause disqualified for municipal office, should presume to take any such office, should forfeit five hundred pounds, and should be for life incapable of holding any public employment whatever.
At the instance, too, of Sacheverell's friends, certain other books were burnt two days before his own, by order of the House of Commons: so that the High Church party had not altogether the worst of the battle. The books so burnt were the following: 1. The Rights of the Christian Church asserted against the Romish and all other Priests. By M. Tindal. 2.
Sacheverell's trial, and in the representation of the Lower House of Convocation, and produced as so many proofs of the profaneness, blasphemy, and atheism of the nation; there being nothing more profane, blasphemous, or atheistical in those representations, than what these prophets have spoke, whose writings are yet called by our priests, "the word of God."
Robert Walpole was on the threshold of his power, and, as a manager of Sacheverell's impeachment, he had seen the hold of the Church upon the common people, may even, indeed, have remembered that Hoadly's own dwelling had been threatened with destruction in the popular excitement. Quieta non movere was his motto; and he was not interested in the niceties of ecclesiastic metaphysic.
There was, indeed, a pamphlet issued by "a Gentleman of Oxford," which bears many marks of Defoe's authorship, and contains an account of some passages in Sacheverell's life not at all to the clergyman's credit.
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