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History of England, from the Accession of James the Second, the — Volume 4 by Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay
page 49 of 936 (05%)
Adam's mouth. She was Job's wife, imploring her ruined lord, who
sate scraping himself among the ashes, not to curse and die, but
to swear and live. While the ballad makers celebrated the victory
of Mrs. Sherlock, another class of assailants fell on the
theological reputation of her spouse. Till he took the oaths, he
had always been considered as the most orthodox of divines. But
the captious and malignant criticism to which his writings were
now subjected would have found heresy in the Sermon on the Mount;
and he, unfortunately, was rash enough to publish, at the very
moment when the outcry against his political tergiversation was
loudest, his thoughts on the mystery of the Trinity. It is
probable that, at another time, his work would have been hailed
by good Churchmen as a triumphant answer to the Socinians and
Sabellians. But, unhappily, in his zeal against Socinians and
Sabellians, he used expressions which might be construed into
Tritheism. Candid judges would have remembered that the true path
was closely pressed on the right and on the left by error, and
that it was scarcely possible to keep far enough from danger on
one side without going very close to danger on the other. But
candid judges Sherlock was not likely to find among the
Jacobites. His old allies affirmed that he had incurred all the
fearful penalties denounced in the Athanasian Creed against those
who divide the substance. Bulky quartos were written to prove
that he held the existence of three distinct Deities; and some
facetious malecontents, who troubled themselves very little about
the Catholic verity, amused the town by lampoons in English and
Latin on his heterodoxy. "We," said one of these jesters, "plight
our faith to one King, and call one God to attest our promise. We
cannot think it strange that there should be more than one King
to whom the Doctor has sworn allegiance, when we consider that
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