Sacheverell's "Exploded" Obedience: Restoration and Performance in the Early Eighteenth Century

"Others…with subtle Designs to divine and amuse the People, by Preaching, Writing, and Printing, endeavor to revive the said exploded Doctrines of Non-Resistance, and absolute uncondition'd Obedience as Things the People of England ought to think themselves oblig'd by…"

Daniel Defoe, Review 7 January 1709²

The high churchman Dr. Henry Sacheverell set off an explosion of sorts with "The Perils of False Brethren," a sermon delivered at St. Paul's Cathedral to commemorate the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot on November 5, 1709. Sacheverell was known for delivering strident sermons filled with hyperbole, but the most explosive aspect of this sermon proved to be its attempt to restore an older, scriptural view of obedience to the monarchy. Sacheverell's sermon endorsed a Reformation view of obedience which originated in William Tyndale's Obedience of a Christian Man (1528). Citing Romans 13.1, Titus 3.1, and other touchstone passages, Tyndale argued that Christian subjects must obey the king or queen through all vicissitudes, even if the monarch became tyrannical or committed evil acts. In such cases, as subsequent propagandists would argue, the duty to obey remained in force, leaving the Christian "without other resistance save only Prayers & Tears."³ The Tudor regime instituted Tyndale's view of obedience in the Act of Royal Supremacy (1534), and the Church of England incorporated it into the Edwardian Book of Homilies. The "doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance" went on to become a central tenet of Stuart divine right ideology, maintaining its purchase throughout much of the seventeenth century. The Revolution of 1688/89, however, and the actions of the established clergy against James II in particular, seemed to put an end to the doctrine,⁴ such that Sacheverell's attempt to revive passive obedience in the early eighteenth century struck many as an irrational return to the past.⁵ As Daniel Defoe complained in the Review for 7 January 1710, passive obedience was an "exploded" doctrine that had long since lost its power to convince.⁶ Why did the high churchmen think the doctrine could be restored?

An answer is suggested by the equivocal nature of the term "exploded." In public sphere discourse, to "explode" a belief was to reject it through exposure to reason, with the implication that the belief was a deception or illusion that would necessarily fade, as it were, in the light of day. Etymologically, the word derived from the action of a theater audience that clapped, or hissed, a bad performance from the stage. The term thus recalled the action of a hostile crowd in the Restoration playhouse, likening the object under censure to a stage performance that had been denied or canceled out. The term could also denote, as it does today, the application of sudden force or propulsion. An exploded doctrine is one that has burst apart. These different senses of the word assume that the object in question experiences a change of substance. The exploded object or belief is no longer what it was. What these senses do not acknowledge, however, is that the exploded belief may take on a form of publicity that enables it to survive its censure. The paper war occasioned by "The Perils of False Brethren" indicates that passive obedience survived in such a way. When the Whig-dominated House of Lords voted to charge Sacheverell with sedition, supporters rushed to the priest's defense in the press. Sacheverell's obedience flourished as a result of the diligent "Preaching, Writing, and Printing" of the high churchmen.⁷

Sacheverell's exploded obedience provides insight into how the process of restoration that began with the return of the monarchy in 1660 continued into the first decade of the eighteenth century. The high-church project to re-stage religious arguments, though initially limited to a vocal minority, must be seen in broader terms as part of the Church of England's project of restoring its Reformation identity after the English Civil Wars. As recent scholarship on the Church of England has shown, Anglican clergy recognized that their construals of...