A pension was also bestowed on him by Charles: but that pension James soon took away; for Sherlock, though he held himself bound to pay passive obedience to the civil power, held himself equally bound to combat religious errors, and was the keenest and most laborious of that host of controversialists who, in the day of peril, manfully defended the Protestant faith.

In little more than two years he published sixteen treatises, some of them large books, against the high pretensions of Rome.

Not content with the easy victories which he gained over such feeble antagonists as those who were quartered at Clerkenwell and the Savoy, he had the courage to measure his strength with no less a champion than Bossuet, and came out of the conflict without discredit.

Nevertheless Sherlock still continued to maintain that no oppression could justify Christians in resisting the kingly authority.

When the Convention was about to meet, he strongly recommended, in a tract which was considered as the manifesto of a large part of the clergy, that James should be invited to return on such conditions as might secure the laws and religion of the nation, [470] The vote which placed William and Mary on the throne filled Sherlock with sorrow and anger.