Shortly afterwards, in another poem, _The Spanish Descent_, he took his revenge upon the fleet for not carrying out his West Indian scheme by ridiculing unmercifully their first fruitless cruise on the Spanish coast, taking care at the same time to exult in the capture of the galleons at Vigo.
In yet another poem--the success of the _True Born Englishman_ seems to have misguided him into the belief that he had a genius for verse--he reverted to the Reformation of Manners, and angered the Dissenters by belabouring certain magistrates of their denomination.

A pamphlet entitled _A New Test of the Church of England's Loyalty_--in which he twitted the High-Church party with being neither more nor less loyal than the Dissenters, inasmuch as they consented to the deposition of James and acquiesced in the accession of Anne--was better received by his co-religionists.
But when the Bill to prevent occasional conformity was introduced by some hot-headed partisans of the High Church, towards the close of 1702, with the Queen's warm approval, Defoe took a course which made the Dissenters threaten to cast him altogether out of the synagogue.

We have already seen how Defoe had taken the lead in attacking the practice of occasional conformity.

While his co-religionists were imprecating him as the man who had brought this persecution upon them, Defoe added to their ill-feeling by issuing a jaunty pamphlet in which he proved with provoking unanswerableness that all honest Dissenters were noways concerned in the Bill.

Nobody, he said, with his usual bright audacity, but himself "who was altogether born in sin," saw the true scope of the measure.