Next to Drake's Memorial, and closely akin to it in argument, come the two famous sermons of Dr. Sacheverell, the friend of Addison; sermons which made a greater stir in the reign of Queen Anne than any sermons have ever since made, or seem ever likely to make again. They were preached in August and November 1709, the first at Derby, called the _Communication of Sin_, and the other at St. Paul's. The latter, _Perils among False Brethren_, is very vigorous, even to read, and it is easy to understand the commotion it caused. The False Brethren are the Dissenters and Republicans; Sacheverell is as indignant with those "upstart novelists" who presume "to evacuate the grand sanction of the Gospel, the eternity of hell torments," as with those false brethren who "will renounce their creed and read the Decalogue backward . . . fall down and worship the very Devil himself for the riches and honour of this world." In his advocacy of non-resistance he was thought to hit at the Glorious Revolution itself. "The grand security of our government, and the very pillar upon which it stands, is founded upon the steady belief of the subject's obligation to an absolute and unconditional obedience to the supreme power in all things lawful, and the utter illegality of any resistance upon any pretence whatsoever." Then came the great trial in the House of Lords, and Sacheverell's most able defence, often attributed to his friend Atterbury. This speech, which Boyer calls "studied, artful, and pathetic," deeply affected the fair sex, and even drew tears from some of the tender-hearted; but a 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.