[Henry] Sacheverell\u2019s analysis was clear: the Church had taken into its bosom, or \u2014 worse \u2014 given positions of power to, people who were totally inimical to the worship, doctrine, and position of the Church of England itself. It had got into bed with a governing class that, in fact, hated it and sought its destruction. A misplaced attempt to broaden the Church\u2019s appeal meant giving place and precedence to those who in their practice were antithetical to how the Church had always acted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They were now calling the shots, and were dismantling from the inside all that had, \u201cin living memory\u201d \u2014 a reference to the horrors of the Civil War \u2014 been fought for so painfully. She had taken \u201cinto her bowels\u201d those who \u201cneither believe her faith, own her mission, submit to her discipline, or comply with her liturgy\u201d. As he put it, \u201cif the Church can\u2019t be pulled down, it may be blown up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What Sacheverell found particularly repugnant was the dishonesty of those who sought to do this. While there was a certain grim integrity to Roman Catholic or Presbyterian attempts to do down the Church of England, Sacheverell viewed the \u201creligious Trojan Horse\u201d that he discerned at the heart of early-18th-century Anglicanism as wicked first and foremost because of its dishonesty: \u201cWhat they could not do by open violence, they will not fail by secret treachery to accomplish.\u201d Nobody could accuse him of not being plain-speaking, and it was the verbal dissembling of the powers that were which so riled him.<\/p>Read it all<\/a>. I wrote a piece about the most important celebrity Vicar you\u2019ve never heard of, who died 300 years ago this week. https:\/\/t.co\/diESz7aRS2<\/a><\/p>— Fergus Butler-Gallie (@_F_B_G_) May 31, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>