He declared that he would be no party to a schism; he advised those who sought his counsel not to leave their parish churches; nay, finding that the law which had ejected him from his cure did not interdict him from performing divine service, he officiated at Saint Dunstan's, and there prayed for King William and Queen Mary.

The apostolical injunction, he said, was that prayers should be made for all in authority, and William and Mary were visibly in authority.

His Jacobite friends loudly blamed his inconsistency.

How, they asked, if you admit that the Apostle speaks in this passage of actual authority, can you maintain that, in other passages of a similar kind, he speaks only of legitimate authority?
Or how can you, without sin, designate as King, in a solemn address to God, one whom you cannot, without sin, promise to obey as King?
These reasonings were unanswerable; and Sherlock soon began to think them so; but the conclusion to which they led him was diametrically opposed to the conclusion to which they were meant to lead him.

He hesitated, however, till a new light flashed on his mind from a quarter from which there was little reason to expect any thing but tenfold darkness.