

18,'U.] Defoe: his Life ami W tilings. ^3 



found an imitator at thepresent day in the person of thelateDean of Chester; 

 we may perhaps be excused if we enter into a few of the particulars of 

 the case. Dr. Sherlock, who was Master of the Temple, had distinguished 

 himself from the first moment of his entering into holy orders, by his 

 uncompromising zeal in favour of passive obedience, and the divine right 

 of kings. Throughout the reign of James II. the Dr. was one of his 

 staunchest supporters. His submission to the ruling powers knew no 

 bounds, and his preferments bid fair to become equally unlimited, when, 

 unfortunately, in the very meridian of his prosperity, a few incon- 

 venient blunders, made on the part of James, brought in William^ 

 and the astonished, and not a little disgusted, Master of the Temple, 

 suddenly found himself holding pluralities under a monarch whom; 

 according to his principles of legitimacy, and so forth, he could not 

 regard otherwise than as a usurper. Under these circumstances, and 

 as he had always been a clamorous polemic, he could not do less than 

 refuse the oaths of supremacy to William, nor could William, in return, 

 do less than deprive him of his preferments. But such martyrdom never 

 entered into the Dr/s speculations. His zeal was of that peculiarly poetic 

 character, which, being too high-toned for the common-place vulgarities 

 of the world, shines to greater advantage in theory than practice. He 

 began also to reflect that it was exceedingly unbecoming the wisdom 

 and dignity of a sound divine to hesitate at swallowing a few fresh 

 oaths, or recanting a few unfashionable opinions ; and accordingly, 

 with a facility of digestion perfectly miraculous, the Doctor not only 

 dispatched all the oaths necessary to ensure him the new monarch's 

 favour, but recanted also every single word he had uttered from 

 the pulpit and elsewhere on the subject of " the right divine of 

 kings to govern wrong/' Not content with this wholesale recanta- 

 tion, he even went further, and had actually the hardihood to defend 

 his conduct in a pamphlet entitled " The Case of the Allegiance due 

 to Sovereign Powers, stated and resolved according to Scripture and 

 Reason, and the Principles of the Church of England ; with a more 

 particular Respect to the Oath lately enjoined, of Allegiance to their 

 present Majesties, King William and Queen Mary." As this pamphlet 

 was in direct and impudent opposition to one which the Dr. had 

 published some few years before, when James, not William, was on the 

 throne, under the title of " The Case of Resistance due to Sovereign 

 Powers, stated and resolved according to Scripture and to Reason/' it 

 brought down upon him a whole host of enemies, and among them 

 Defoe, who exposed the apostate's conduct in so stinging a manner that, 

 notwithstanding Sherlock's honours and preferments, he never wholly 

 recovered his mortification. 



In the present day Dr. Philpotts bids fair to become no unworthy 

 successor of Dr. Sherlock, with this exception indeed, that the former's 

 apostacy is incomparably the most flagrant of the two. And yet, 

 for his interested conversion, the traitor has been made a bishop ! The 

 appointment is an ominous one, and to those who read with learned eye 

 the signs of the times, teems with hazard to the established church, of 

 the majority of whose ministers, Louis XIV. formed no incorrect estimate 

 when he observed, in reply to King James, who entreated him to furnish 

 means for an invasion : " As for your English clergy, 1 look upon them 

 much worse than the commonalty, having, not only by teaching and 

 preaching, taught the people to forswear themselves, but shewn ill 



