70 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. 



upon his parishioners. And as he was a popular 

 preacher upon those arguments, he was carefully 

 watched after the publication of the Directions 

 to Preachers, as a person likely to offend against 

 that order. 



It was on the 2nd of May that he preached 

 in his own church upon 1 Cor. xii. 13. From 

 this text he took occasion to treat concerning 

 the nature of the Catholic Church, and to settle 

 the true notion of that term as it stands in our 

 creeds. Having done that, at the close of his ser- 

 moii, he drew six conclusions from what he had 

 said, against the Church of Rome ; to show the 

 vanity of her pretensions in engrossing the name 

 of Catholic to herself. But these he chose 

 rather to propose by way of inquiry than asser- 

 tion, that he might be led to a more equal and 

 just examination of them, which he proposed to 

 do afterwards with great particularity, had he 

 been suffered to have prosecuted the subject in 

 the manner he intended. Now the first of these 

 queries which he designed to speak to the next 

 Lord's Day, was this, whether upon the true 

 stating of the notion of the Catholic Church, the 

 question that the Romanists laid so much stress 

 upon, viz. in what part of the world, or in which 

 of the different communions of Christendom the 

 true church was to be found, be not quite im- 

 pertinent and out of doors ? 



