our professed enemies to overturn and destroy, the constitution and establishment of both". In due course the Church would lose its character and become a "heterogeneous mixture" united only by Protestantism. He then claimed that "this spurious and villainous notion, which will take in Jews, Quakers, Mahometans and anything, as well as Christians". This had been tried when the Church's enemies had advocated Comprehension and now the same people were using "Moderation and Occasional Conformity" to destroy the defences of the Church. The end result would be an Erastian state of affairs where people became nonplussed about questions of faith and fall prey to "universal scepticism and infidelity". The Occasionally Conforming Dissenters Sacheverell saw as the enemy within. He called the Toleration Act 1688 the "Indulgence" and "that the old leaven of their forefathers is still working" in the present Dissenting generation: he called them a "brood of vipers" and asked "whether these men are not contriving and plotting our utter ruin, and whether all those False Brethren that fall in with these measures and designs do not contribute basely to it? ... I pray God we may be out of danger, but we may remember the King's person was voted to be so at the same time that his murderers were conspiring his death". Sacheverell pointed to the sinfulness of the false brethren. For Anglicans holding office it was a betrayal of their oaths; secondly, it was an example of hypocrisy and disregarding of principle for material gain. He said it was a "vast scandal and offence ... to see men of characters and stations thus shift and prevaricate with their principles", like Christ's disciples when Christ's life was at stake. He attacked "the crafty insidiousness of such wily Volpones". "Volpone" was the nickname of Sidney Godolphin, a Tory who had allied himself with the Whig Junto and who had been attacked by Tories as an apostate. The prospect for these false brethren, Sacheverell claimed, was to take "his portion with hypocrites and unbelievers, with all liars, that have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone". Sacheverell ended the sermon by exhorting Anglicans to close ranks, to present "an army of banners to our enemies" and hope that the false brethren "would throw off the mask, entirely quit the Church of which they are no true members, and not fraudulently eat her bread and lay