wait for her ruin". High-ranking clergy must excommunicate offenders "and let any power on earth dare reverse a sentence ratified in Heaven". A long battle lay ahead for the Church Militant, "against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places". That the battle would be hard was accepted "because her adversaries are chief and her enemies at present prosper". However he did not doubt that the battle must be joined, knowing that "there is a God that can and will raise her up, if we forsake her not": "Now the God of all Grace, who hath called us into his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. To Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen". Reaction As Sacheverell left St Paul's and travelled through the City, he was cheered by a crowd. The joke doing the rounds was that "St Paul's was on fire a Saturday". Sacheverell prepared the sermon for publication and consulted three lawyers, who all claimed it breached neither common or civil law. On 25 November the sermon was printed, the first edition being 500 copies. On 1 December the second edition came off the press and numbered between 30,000 and 40,000 copies. By the end of Sacheverell's trial, an estimated 100,000 copies of his sermon were in circulation. A conservative estimate of the readership, 250,000 people, was equal to the whole electorate of Britain at that time. This had no parallel in early eighteenth century Britain. For the first few weeks, many Whigs believed that the sermon was beneath official response. Defoe wrote that "the roaring of this beast ought to give you no manner of disturbance. You ought to laugh at him, let him alone; he'll vent his gall, and then he'll be quiet". Within three days of the sermon being on sale, pamphlet responses were being printed. George Ridpath's The Peril of Being Zealously Affected, but not Well attacked Sacheverell, as did White Kennett's True Answer. The Whig author of High Church Display'd claimed that Sacheverell "and his party were entirely routed in those paper-skirmishes". It took six weeks before a pamphlet defence of Sacheverell was published, and thereafter they became numerous. On the last Sunday of November Sacheverell preached at St Margaret's, Lothbury. The church was packed to