thing, but says, "if the clergy assembled often, and might act as other assemblies of clergy in Christendom, much good might have come: but the misfortune lay in their long disuse, and that in his own and a good part of his father's time, they never came together, except at the command of the prince."[41] [Footnote 38: Page 47.] [Footnote 39: See note, p. 9. [T.S.]] [Footnote 40: Henry Sacheverell, D.D., was educated at Marlborough and Oxford. At Magdalen College he was a fellow-student with Addison, and obtained there his fellowship and doctor's degree. In 1709 he preached two sermons, one at the Derby Assizes, and the other at St. Paul's, in which he urged the imminent danger of the Church. For these sermons, which the parliament considered highly inflammatory, he was, by the House of Commons, at the instigation of Godolphin, impeached, and tried before the Lords in 1710. He was found guilty of a misdemeanour, and was suspended from preaching for three years. The trial made a great stir at the time, and served but to increase the popularity of a man who, had he been let alone, would, probably, never have been heard of. He died in 1724, holding the living of St. Andrew, Holborn, to which he was presented after the expiration of his sentence. [T.S.]] [Footnote 41: See Sir Thomas More's "Apology," 1533, p. 241.] I suppose his lordship thinks, there is some original impediment in the study of divinity, or secret incapacity in a gown and cassock without lawn, which disqualifies all inferior clergymen from debating upon subjects of doctrine or discipline in the church. It is a famous saying of his, that "he looks upon every layman to be an honest man, until he is by experience convinced to the contrary; and on every clergyman as a knave, till he finds him to be an honest man." What opinion then must we have of a Lower House of Convocation:[42] where I am confident he will hardly find three persons that ever convinced him of their honesty, or will ever be at the pains to do it? Nay, I am afraid they would think such a conviction might be no very advantageous bargain, to gain the character of an honest man with his Lordship, and lose it with the rest of the world. [Footnote 42: It must not be forgotten, that, during the reign of Queen Anne, the body of the clergy were high-church men; but the bishops, who had chiefly been promoted since the Revolution, were Whiggish in politics, and moderate in their sentiments of church government. Hence the Upper and Lower Houses of Convocation rarely agreed in sentiment on affairs of church or state. [T. S.]]