Henry Sacheverell was ten years younger than Samuel Wesley. He obtained the rudiments of education from a village schoolmaster, at the cost of an apothecary, on whose death, his widow sent the youth to Magdalene College, Oxford. Here he distinguished himself by some clever poems in Latin; was chosen fellow of his college, and became tutor to several pupils who afterwards attained great eminence. His first preferment in the Church was to the living of Cannock, in Staffordshire; whence he removed, in 1705, to St Saviour’s, Southwark. Four years after his removal hither, he preached the sermons already mentioned. The sermon at Derby, was preached at the assizes, August 15, 1709, and is entitled, “The Communication of Sin, a Sermon, by Henry Sacheverell, D.D.; published at the request of the gentlemen of the grand jury, London, 1709.” The text is, “Neither be partakers of other men’s sins.” One extract from the sermon must suffice. Speaking of men propagating sin by pernicious writings, he says:—
“How do these execrable miscreants, Arius and Socinus, though so many years rotten in their graves, still stink above ground, and live again in a hellish transmigration of their damnable blasphemies and heresies! How do those Atheistical monsters, Hobbes and Spinoza, in their accursed books and proselytes, still deny the God that made them! What a magazine of sin, what an inexhaustible fund of debauchery and destruction does any author of heresy, schism, or immorality, set up! Who would have thought, threescore years ago, that the romantic and silly enthusiasms of such an illiterate and scandalous wretch as George Fox should, in the small compass even of our own memory, gain such mighty ground, captivate so many fools, and damn them with diabolical inspiration and nonsensical cant? Or, to go higher, who would have thought that two or three Jesuits, in masquerade, crept into a conventicle, should sow those schismatical seeds of faction and rebellion, that, in a few years, should rise to that prodigious degree, as to be able to grasp the crown, contend with the sceptre and not only threaten, but accomplish the downfall of both Church and State? And are not the same hands at work again? Were ever such outrageous blasphemies against God and all religion vented publicly with impunity as at present in our own Church and kingdom?”
The sermon at St Paul’s was preached on the 5th of November 1709, and is entitled, “The Perils of False Brethren, both in Church and State.” It is dedicated “To the Right Honourable Sir Samuel Garrard, Lord Mayor of the City of London.” The sermon is long, able, and eloquent; but, at the same time, rabid and almost frantic. The following are specimens:—
Speaking of the Church of England, he says: “Her holy communion has been rent and divided by factions and schismatical impostors; her pure doctrine has been corrupted and defiled; her primitive worship and discipline profaned and abused; her sacred orders denied and vilified; her priests and professors calumniated, misrepresented, and ridiculed; her altars and sacraments prostituted to hypocrites, Deists, Socinians, and Athiests; and all this done, not only by our professed enemies, but, which is worse, by our pretended friends and false brethren.”
Having laid down the doctrine of “absolute and unconditional obedience to kings in all things lawful,” he proceeds to say: “This fundamental doctrine, notwithstanding its divine sanction, is now, it seems, quite exploded and ridiculed out of countenance, as an unfashionable, superannuated, nay, as a dangerous tenet, utterly inconsistent with the right, liberty, and property of the people, who have the power invested in them to cancel their allegiance at pleasure, and to call their sovereign to account for high-treason against his supreme subjects; yea, to dethrone and murder him for a criminal, as they did the royal martyr, by a judiciary sentence. God be thanked, these damnable positions, let them come from Rome or from Geneva, from the pulpit or the press, are condemned for rebellion and high-treason. Where is the difference betwixt the power granted the people to judge and dethrone their sovereigns for any cause they think fit, and the no less usurped power of the Pope to solve the people from their allegiance, and to dispose of sceptres and diadems whenever he thinks it his interest to pluck them from his enemies? If such a deposing power is to be intrusted into the hands of mortals, less inconvenience will ensue in placing it in one than in many. Our crown and constitution can never be safe under such precarious dependencies and despotic imaginations. A prince will be the breath of his subjects’ nostrils, to be blown in or out at their caprice and pleasure, and a worse vassal than the meanest of his guards. Such villainous and seditious principles as these, demand a confutation from that government they so insolently threaten and arraign, and are only proper to be answered by that sword they would make our princes bear in vain, by the so long-called-for censure of an ecclesiastical synod, and the correction of a provoked and affronted legislature, to whose strict justice and undeserved mercy I commit both them and their authors.”
Again, speaking of the Dissenters, he designates them “filthy dreamers, presumptuous and self-willed men, despisers of dominion, who are not afraid to speak evil of dignitaries, and who wrest the Word of God to their own destruction.” He adds: “These false brethren in our government are suffered to combine into bodies and seminaries, where Atheism, Deism, Tritheism, Socinianism, with all the hellish principles of fanaticism, regicide, and anarchy, are openly professed and taught, to corrupt and debauch the youth of the nation. Certainly the toleration was never intended to indulge and cherish such monsters and vipers in our bosom, that scatter their pestilence at noon-day, and will rend, distract, and confound the firmest and best settled constitution in the world. It is true, that since these sectarists and sanctified hypocrites have found out a way to swallow not only oaths but sacraments, to qualify themselves to get into places and preferments, they can put on a show of loyalty and seem tolerably easy in the government; but let her Majesty reach out her little finger to touch their loins, and these sworn adversaries to passive obedience and the royal family shall fret themselves, and curse their Queen, and their God, and shall look upwards.”
Speaking of the comprehension scheme of Archbishop Tillotson, he says, “This latitudinarian, heterogeneous mixture of all persons of what different faith soever, uniting in Protestancy, would render the Church of England the most absurd, contradictory, and self-inconsistent body in the world. This spurious and villainous notion, which will take in Jews, Quakers, Mohammedans, and anything as well as Christians, our false brethren have made use of to undermine the very essential constitution of our Church. Her worst adversaries must be let into her bowels under the holy umbrage of sons. To admit this religious Trojan horse, big with arms and ruin into our holy city, the strait gate must be laid quite open; and the pure spouse of Christ must be prostituted to more adulterers than the scarlet whore in the Revelations. This was indeed a ready way to fill the house of God with pagan beasts instead of Christian sacrifices. Our Church would have been ruined by the blasted and long-projected scheme of these ecclesiastical Ahithophels; a scheme so monstrous, that even the sectarists of all sorts laughed at it as ridiculous and impracticable.”
“Let the Dissenters, those miscreants, begot in rebellion, born in sedition, and nursed up in faction, enjoy the indulgence the Government has condescended to give them; but let them also move within their proper sphere, and not grow eccentric, and, like comets that burst their orb, threaten the ruin and downfall of our Church and State. They tell us they have relinquished the principles as well as the sins of their forefathers; but, if so, why do they not renounce their schism, and come sincerely into our Church? Why do they still pelt the Church with more blasphemous libels, and scurrilous lampoons, than were ever published in Oliver’s usurpation? Have they not lately villainously divided us with knavish distinctions of High and Low Churchmen? Are not the best characters they give us those of Papists, Jacobites, and conspirators?”
This firebrand sermon was delivered before the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London, in St Paul’s Cathedral, on the 5th of November 1709. The magistrates and common-councilmen gave thanks to the thundering preacher; the discourse was printed, and above 40,000 copies distributed throughout the kingdom. Parliament met on the 15th of the same month, and the House of Commons at once passed a resolution to the effect, that this sermon, and also another, which on the 15th of August previous Sacheverell had preached at Derby Assizes, “were malicious, scandalous, and seditious libels, highly reflecting upon her Majesty and her Government, the late happy Revolution, and the Protestant succession, as by law established;” and ordered that Dr Henry Sacheverell should attend at the bar of the House. Accordingly, on December 14th, Sacheverell went to Westminster, where he was met by a hundred of the most eminent clergymen then resident in and about the capital, including the Queen’s own chaplains. The doctor was taken into custody, and impeached at the bar of the House of Lords of high crimes and misdemeanours. After being kept in custody for a month, he was on the 13th of January 1710, admitted to bail. The trial was fixed for February 27th, and the Commons resolved to be present as a committee of the whole House, and a place was prepared for them accordingly in Westminster Hall. The articles of impeachment were four in number, and were urged by the chief members of her Majesty’s Government; while Sacheverell had a council of five gentlemen employed in his defence. When the legal advisers on both sides had said all that they had to say, the doctor was permitted to speak for himself. The scene was immensely imposing. The trial lasted for a period of more than three weeks, from February 27th to the 23d of March. The greatest excitement prevailed both in town and country. It was given out boldly, and in all places, that the Dissenters were about to recover their old ascendancy; that a design was formed by the Whig Government to pull down the Church; that the prosecution of Sacheverell was only to try their strength, and that upon their success in it they would proceed to their object openly and fearlessly. The clergy generally espoused Sacheverell as their champion, and used their pulpits in his defence. Many places were full of riot, and little was heard throughout the country except the old war-cry of the Church in danger. In London there was every day a prodigious mob of butchers’ boys, chimney-sweepers, scavengers, costermongers, and prostitutes; and the more respectable class of the citizens began to apprehend that all this drinking and rioting might end in robbing, maiming, and murdering. In Westminster Hall, near the throne, was a box, where the Queen sat, an interested listener, in a private character; one platform was raised for the managers of the impeachment, and another for the doctor and his counsel. On one side of the hall, benches were erected for the Commons of Great Britain; and, on the other, accommodations were provided for noble ladies and gentlewomen; while, at the end, were galleries for the people in general. When Sacheverell left the hall, on the first day of his trial, to return to his comfortable and well-stocked lodging in the Temple, a countless mob that had stood shouting, during the proceedings in Palace Yard, followed him with tremendous huzzas; the streets were thronged; people of both sexes saluted him from balconies and windows; while the doctor pompously returned these compliments from the chair in which he was being carried, and bowed and nodded like a Chinese mandarin. On the second day of the trial, the mob began to plunder and to burn the Dissenters’ meeting-houses. The first attack was upon Mr Burgess’s chapel. The pulpit and pews were pulled in pieces; and cushions, Bibles, benches, curtains, sconces, and everything else combustible, were carried into Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and set on fire, amid shouts of “High Church and Sacheverell! Sacheverell and High Church!” Five or six other chapels were similarly destroyed. Bishop Burnet’s house was threatened, and a man standing at the door had his skull cleft with a spade, because he refused to shout, “The Church and Sacheverell;”[[206]] but a detachment of the Guards was called out and the mob dispersed.
As already stated, when the Commons had gone through their charges, and the counsel for Sacheverell had spoken in his defence, he was allowed to speak for himself. It was a noticeable fact, however, that the speech which Sacheverell recited differed so widely from the style of his sermons and other productions, that it was evidently the work of another. The author of Knight’s History of England, thinks it probable that Sacheverell was assisted in it by the learning of Dr Smalridge and Dr Atterbury, both of whom stood by his side during nearly the whole of his lengthened trial; and others have suspected that, because of the help thus afforded, Sacheverell, by his will, bequeathed Atterbury a legacy of £500. It so happens, however, that all this speculation is beside the mark, for John Wesley most emphatically declares that Sacheverell’s defence was written “by the rector of Epworth,” his father.[[207]] If we are asked for farther evidence of this, we have none to give. John Wesley, without doubt, had the information from his father, and both he and his father, we trust, are above the suspicion of being capable of giving utterance to a statement which they knew to be a lie. There was nothing to induce either Wesley or his father to claim the paternity of Sacheverell’s defence, if such paternity had not been a fact; and even if circumstances had existed to render it an honourable distinction to be recognised as the author of such a production, John Wesley and his father were among the last men in the world to attempt to secure honour by dishonourable means. Personally we should rejoice if the authorship belonged to Smalridge, Atterbury, or any one sooner than to Samuel Wesley; but, after the explicit declaration of his son, we are forced to the belief that Sacheverell’s defence was a defence which Wesley wrote for Sacheverell to recite. We regret this for a twofold reason; first, because Sacheverell, however able, was a turbulent priest, not worthy of the help of such a man as the rector of Epworth was; and, secondly, because it proves that Wesley, who began his ministerial life as a moderate Churchman, and an admirer of Archbishop Tillotson, was now a partisan of the High Church clique, and allied with men who regarded the Dissenters with the bitterest hostility. It is true that considering the treatment which Wesley had received from his old friends, the Dissenters, during the last six years, there is no need to be surprised at this; and yet, at the same time, it is a fact which the writer cannot but deplore.