The Perils of False Brethren
His famous sermons on the church in danger from the neglect of the Whig ministry to keep guard over its interests were preached, the one at Derby on 15 August 1709, the other at St Paul's Cathedral on 5 November 1709, entitled The Perils of False Brethren, in Church, and State. Such 5 November sermons usually compared the Gunpowder Plot of 5 November 1605 with William of Orange's landing at Torbay on 5 November 1688 as "a double deliverance" from Catholicism. Sacheverell compared the Gunpowder Plot not to 1688 but to the date of the execution of Charles I, 30 January 1649, as two days of the "rage and bloodthirstiness of both the popish and fanatick enemies of our Church and Government...These TWO DAYS indeed are but one united proof and visible testimonial of the same dangerous and rebellious principles these confederates in iniquity maintain". The threat to the church from Catholics was dealt with in three minutes; the rest of the one-and-a-half hour sermon was an attack on Nonconformists and the "false brethren" who aided them in menacing church and state. Sacheverell maintained that the Anglican doctrine of non-resistance had not been violated in 1688 but that as James II had fled the country he had abdicated, leading the way to the succession of William and Mary and the continued validity of the biblical words, "touch not the Lord's anointed".
They were immediately reprinted, the latter being dedicated to the lord mayor and the former to the author's kinsman, George Sacheverell, who was high sheriff of Derbyshire that year; and, as the passions of the whole British population were at this period keenly exercised between the rival factions of Whig and Tory; Sacheverell's arguments on behalf of the church which supplied the Tories with most of their support made him their idol. The Whig ministry, then slowly but surely losing the support of the country, were divided in opinion as to the propriety of prosecuting this zealous parson. John Somers was against such a measure; but Sidney Godolphin, who was believed to be personally alluded to in one of these harangues under the nickname of "Volpone," urged the necessity of a prosecution and gained the day.
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