Hundreds of pages written at this time about the rights of Joash and the bold enterprise of Jehoiada are mouldering in the ancient bookcases of Oxford and Cambridge.  While Sherlock was thus fiercely attacked by his old friends, he was not left unmolested by his old enemies.  Some vehement Whigs, among whom Julian Johnson was conspicuous, declared that Jacobitism itself was respectable when compared with the vile doctrine which had been discovered in the Convocation Book.  That passive obedience was due to Kings was doubtless an absurd and pernicious notion.  Yet it was impossible not to respect the consistency and fortitude of men who thought themselves bound to bear true allegiance, at all hazards, to an unfortunate, a deposed, an exiled oppressor.  But the theory which Sherlock had learned from Overall was unmixed baseness and wickedness.  A cause was to be abandoned, not because it was unjust, but because it was unprosperous.  Whether James had been a tyrant or had been the father of his people was quite immaterial.  If he had won the battle of the Boyne we should have been bound as Christians to be his slaves.  He had lost it; and we were bound as Christians to be his foes.  Other Whigs congratulated the proselyte on having come, by whatever road, to a right practical conclusion, but could not refrain from sneering at the history which he gave of his conversion.  He was, they said, a man of eminent learning and abilities.  He had studied the question of allegiance long and deeply.  He had written much about it.  Several months had been allowed him for reading, prayer and reflection before he incurred suspension, several months more before he incurred deprivation.  He had formed an opinion for which he had declared himself ready to suffer martyrdom; he had taught that opinion to others; and he had then changed that opinion solely because he had discovered that it had been, not refuted, but dogmatically pronounced erroneous by the two Convocations more than eighty years before.  Surely, this was to renounce all liberty of private judgment, and to ascribe to the Synods of Canterbury and York an infallibility which the Church of England had declared that even Oecumenical Councils could not justly claim.  If, it was sarcastically said, all our notions of right and wrong, in matters of vital importance to the well being of society, are to be suddenly altered by a few lines of manuscript found in a corner of the library at Lambeth, it is surely much to be wished, for the peace of mind of humble Christians, that all the documents to which this sort of authority belongs should be rummaged out and sent to the press as soon as possible; for, unless this be done, we may all, like the Doctor when he refused the oaths last year, be committing sins in the full persuasion that we are discharging duties.  In truth, it is not easy to believe that the Convocation Book furnished Sherlock with any thing more than a pretext for doing what he had made up his mind to do.  The united force