LIFE OB' ARCHBISHOP SHARP. 7 



taste for what is good, as well as propensity to 

 evil, the encouragement of which, by timely 

 and seasonable examples, is commonly the first 

 step in a virtuous education : for these are their 

 best instructions, till reason calls them forth into 

 a higher class of learning and improvement : and 

 what examples so instructive to them, as those 

 of their own parents, whose judgments they 

 are wont solely to rely upon, and whose actions 

 they are fond to imitate in every thing. 



But he had also early imbibed from his father 

 (who fell in with the prevailing principles of those 

 times) the doctrine of Calvin about absolute 

 and irreversible decrees of predestination and 

 reprobation : insomuch, that he went up to the 

 University a rigid predestinarian, and thought 

 himself able to vindicate the hardest point of 

 their doctrine, and to prove that absolute re- 

 probation manifested God's glory, as it shewed 

 his dominion over his creatures ; but his tutor 

 took some pains with him upon this head : and 

 by putting some questions seriously to him, as 

 whether he thought it any glory to himself to 

 tread out the life of a poor worm ? and others 

 of the like nature, (which would lead him to 

 reflect, that the glory of the Supreme Being 

 could not possibly consist in any of those things 

 which would not so much as make for the glory 

 of finite beings,) he brought him by degrees to 



