ames II. and then a
Protestant again, but whether before or after the abdication of
James is not quite clear. He placed a high value on his own work,
for when, in December 1707, the Grand Jury of Middlesex presented
_The Rights_ its author sagely reflected that such a proceeding
would "occasion the reading of one of the best books that have
been published in our age by many more people than otherwise
would have read it." This probably was the case, with the result
that it was burnt, as aforesaid, by the hangman in 1710 by order
of the House of Commons, at the instance of Sacheverell's
friends, in the very same week that Sacheverell's sermons
themselves were burnt! The House wished perhaps to show itself
impartial. The victory, for the time at least, was with
Sacheverell and the Church. The Whig ministry was overturned, and
its Tory successor passed the Bill against Occasional Conformity,
and the Schism Act; and, had the Queen's reign been prolonged,
would probably have repealed the very meagre Toleration Act of
1689. Tindal, however, despite the Tory reaction, continued to
write on the side of civil and religious liberty, keeping his
best work for the last, published within three years of his
death, when he was past seventy, namely, _Christianity as Old as
the Creation; or, the Gospel a republication of the Religion of
Nature_ (1730). Strange to say, this work, criticised as it was,
was neither presented nor burnt. I have no reason, therefore, to
present it here, and indeed it is a book of which rather to read
the whole than merely extracts.

About the same time that Sacheverell's sermons were the sensation
of London, a sermon preached in Dublin on the Presbyterian side
was attended there with the same marks of distinction. In
November 1711 Boyse's sermon on _The Office of a Scriptural
Bishop_ was burnt by the hangman, at the command of the Irish
House of Lords. Unfortunately one cannot obtain this sermon
without a great number of others, amongst which the author
embedded it in a huge and repulsive folio comprising all his
works. The sermon was first preached and printed in 1709, and
reprinted the next year: it enters at length into the historical
origin of Episcopacy in the early Church, the author alluding as
follows to the Episcopacy aimed at by too many of his own
contemporaries: "A grand and pompous sinecure, a domination over
all the churches and ministers in a large district managed by
others as his delegates