A few weeks after the accession of Queen Anne, the famous Henry Sacheverell began the war by preaching his furious sermon, at Oxford, on “political union;” in which, says Defoe, “he dooms all Dissenters to destruction, without either bell, book, or candle.”[167] In this celebrated sermon, Sacheverell lays it down as a principle, that “religion and government, Church and State, make up one entire compounded constitution, sharing the same fate and circumstances, twisted and interwoven into the very being and principles of each other, both alike jointly assisting and being assisted; and, like the philosopher’s twins, they communicate to each other their mirth or sorrow, and equally suffer or rejoice. A ruined Church and prosperous Government are irreconcilable contradictions in experience, confronted and confuted by the universal testimony of all ages and histories, sacred and profane.”[168] Having attempted to illustrate and to establish this principle, he then makes his doctrine to bear upon English Dissenters, and uses language the most violent. The following are specimens:— The Dissenters are “a confused swarm of sectarists gathered about the body of the Church of England, not to partake of its communion, but to disturb its peace,” (p. 20.) Men like Tillotson, who were in favour of the scheme for comprehending the Dissenters within the pale of the Established Church, are designated “false and perfidious members, who, under the hypocritical disguise of charity and moderation, would have taken down the fence of the Church of England, and removed its landmark, to make way for men to enter, who would have debauched its doctrines, overrun its discipline, and subverted its constitution. These shuffling, treacherous latitudinarians ought to be stigmatised, and treated equally as dangerous enemies to government, as well as Church,” (p. 20.) ----- Footnote 167: _Inquiry into Occasional Conformity_, by Defoe. Footnote 168: Sacheverell’s _Sermon_, pp. 6, 7. ----- Again: “Presbytery and Republicanism go hand in hand. They are but the same disorderly, levelling principles, in the two different branches of our state, equally implacable enemies to monarchy and Episcopacy. They were the same hand that were guilty both of regicide and sacrilege, that divided the king’s head and crown, and that made our churches stables and dens of beasts, as well as thieves,” (p. 20.)