g of a right judgment before him. The
popular belief was that his retractation was the effect of the tears,
expostulations and reproaches of his wife. The lady's spirit was high;
her authority in the family was great; and she cared much more about her
house and her carriage, the plenty of her table and the prospects of her
children, than about the patriarchal origin of government or the meaning
of the word Abdication. She had, it was asserted, given her husband no
peace by day or by night till he had got over his scruples. In letters,
fables, songs, dialogues without number, her powers of seduction and
intimidation were malignantly extolled. She was Xanthippe pouring water
on the head of Socrates. She was Dalilah shearing Samson. She was Eve
forcing the forbidden fruit into 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