150 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. 



omitted here, being to the same purport with 

 the extracts following out of his charges at his 

 ordinary visitations, which were the other and 

 more public occasions that he took of putting 

 all his clergy in remembrance of what they 

 owed to God, and the Church, and the honour 

 of their order. 



These charges were weighty and pathetical, 

 suitable to his gravity and the solemnity of 

 those meetings. He always insisted on the same 

 topics, though he diversified a little the manner 

 of his address to his clergy. The main strokes 

 and substance of what he delivered to them at 

 those times cannot be better represented than 

 in his own words and phrases. 



As to their lives and conversation, which was 

 his first topic, ** He conjured them, in God's 

 name, and as they would answer it in judgment, 

 not only to keep free from scandal, but to shew 

 themselves, upon all occasions, virtuous and 

 grave. He told them, that when once they 

 arrived at such a vigorous sense of religion, as 

 would influence their whole conversation, when 

 they did in good earnest so love God, as to 

 make it the business of their lives to approve 

 themselves to him, that then they had done a 

 good part of their . business, as to rendering 

 their ministry beneficial and successful." 



He laid before them, ** How very vain it was 



