LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. 73 



this paper as a sort of challenge, which if he had 

 not undertaken, would have been interpreted 

 by them as yielding to the strength of the argu- 

 ment. 



Neither ought he to be charged, as the French 

 writer abovementioned thinks fit to charge him, 

 with wilfully transgressing the king's injunc- 

 tions. For the points prohibited were only 

 matters of state, rights of sovereign and subjects, 

 and such questions in divinity as were nice and 

 difficult, and merely speculative, which had for- 

 merly occasioned great troubles in the nation, 

 and particularly the doctrine of predestination 

 and free-will. But the controversy with the 

 Church of Rome, and particularly that question. 

 Whether the Church of England was a church, 

 or no church ? could not possibly be reckoned 

 among the prohibited questions in King Charles's 

 instructions, in 1662, nor consequently in those 

 instructions revived by King James ; though it 

 might be presumed the design of the court in 

 republishing them, was to put a stop, or at least 

 give a check to the clergy's proceeding in the 

 Romish controversy in their sermons. 



But how unblameable soever the Doctor him- 

 self might be in this affair, yet his sermon gave 

 an opportunity to informers to represent whet he 

 had said in a quite different construction from 

 what he intended. The allegory, or allusion, to 



