certain lady to whom, before he
preached the sermon, Sacheverell had explained the allusions in
it to William III., the Ministry, and Lord Godolphin, was so
astonished at the audacity of his public recantation that she
suddenly cried out, "The greatest villain under the sun!" But for
this little fact, one might think Sacheverell was unfairly
treated. At the end of it all, however, he was only suspended
from preaching for three years, and his sermons condemned to be
burnt before the Royal Exchange in presence of the Lord Mayor and
sheriffs; a sentence so much more lenient than at first seemed
probable, that bonfires and illuminations in London and
Westminster attested the general delight. 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. _A Defence of the Rights of the
Christian Church._ 3. _A Letter from a Country Attorney to a
Country Parson concerning the Rights of the Church._ 4. Le
Clerc's extract and judgment of the same. 5. John Clendon's
_Tractatus Philosophico-Theologicus de Persona_: a book that
dealt with the subject of the Trinity.

Boyer gives a curious description of Sacheverell: "A man of large
and strong make and good symmetry of parts; of a livid complexion
and audacious look, without sprightliness; the result and
indication of an envious, ill-natured, proud, sullen, and
ambitious spirit"--clearly not the portrait of a friend. Lord
Campbell thought the St. Paul sermon contemptible, and General
Stanhope, in the debate, called it nonsensical and incoherent. It
seems to me the very reverse, even if we abstract it from its
stupendous effect. Sacheverell, no doubt, was a more than
usually narrow-minded priest; but in judging of the preacher we
must think also of the look and the voice and the gestures, and
these probably fully made up, as they so often do, for anything
false or illogical in the sermon itself.

At all events, Sacheverell won for himself a place in English
history. That he should have brought the House of Lords into
conflict with the Church, causing it to condemn to the flames,
together with his own sermons, the famous Oxford decree of 1683,
which asserted the most absolute claims of