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CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS ON BISHOP BURNETT'S "HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND."

In a season of great political convulsion, when it was almost an impeachable offence for any honest or right-judging man to hint his doubts concerning the reality of the popish plot; when a king was upon the English throne who had so basely apostatized from the faith he had sworn to his people, as willingly to co-operate in all the plans suggested for sweeping away the bulwarks of protestantism, and whose courtiers, for the most part, were of that unprincipled feebleness, servility, and corruption, as to submit passively to his deeds of infamy; in this perilous and degraded state of public affairs, so utterly unsafe for any writer, not the apologist or panegyrist of despotism, Bishop Burnett produced his celebrated work, the "History of the Reformation of the Church of England." According to his enemies, this performance owes its origin to an overweening confidence in his own powers, assisted by mercenary views of personal advantage. If, however, we are to credit his own assertions, and assuredly no substantial reason can be alleged why we should not, he was solely influenced to this great undertaking by the praiseworthy motive of showing, as he says, "what popery and what the Reformation was,"* and, by this confrontation of the doctrines and the discipline of the national churches, to prove to what aggressions of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny a country would be exposed by the actual establishment of a religion such as that of Rome.

But some critics, in pointing out the principles and tendencies of these different and opposed systems of action, with more warmth than fairness, in our opinion, have asserted that the understanding of our historian is so warped by his profession, and his head so filled with the most chimerical fears and fancies, that, though his reasonings may be formed on facts, yet his views, whenever he touches upon the debateable ground of popery, are neither large, liberal, nor enlightened. Higgons, Sewell, Cole, and other writers still less favourable to his memory, have accused him, not only of preserving no temperance of

Introduction to the Hist. of the Reform. vol. iii, p. xxviii, Oxford edition. "He gave," says Gorton," his first volume to the public in 1679, when the affair of the popish plot was in agitation; the second appeared in 1681; but the third volume, which was supplementary, not until 1714.-See Gen. Biog. Dict. vol. i, p. 364.

VOL. IX., NO. XXVI.

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judgment, but even of contaminating the page of history with the most furious sallies of political and religious animosities, in all his references to this subject. But we should be born approximate to the times of Burnett, rightly to appreciate his sentiments in this respect. At the period in which he lived, intolerance towards popery was justifiable on the footing of self-defence; and those disabilities compared by some to the edicts of arbitrary power, were then absolutely necessary to prevent the repetition of the terrific and sanguinary scenes which Europe had witnessed for upwards of a century from the violent and domineering spirit of the apostolic see. What Burnett affirmed experience had too fatally demonstrated; that the horrors preceding the Feast of St. Bartholomew,* the massacres in the Netherlands, and Switzerland, the wars of the League, of Flanders, and of Holland, and the fires of Smithfield-some of the bloodiest atrocities the

• Lord Clarendon calls 1570 "that infamous year," in allusion to the dreadful blow inflicted on the rights of humanity by the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. "An event," he remarks, "attended and accompanied with as foul dissimulation and horrid perjury as ever added deformity to wickedness."-Religion and Policy, p. 427. The Christian law inculcated the love of enemies: how widely, then, must the Roman pontiff, Gregory XIII, have departed from the mandate of our Divine Master! for no sooner was an account brought to him of that atrocious deed, than he went in procession to the church of St. Louis, in Rome, to return thanks to God for it, as for a happy victory; sent a nuncio to France to congratulate the king, and caused medals to be struck, and pictures to be painted, in commemoration of it. The butchery which took place in Paris was afterwards renewed in other towns of France. Dr. Lingard has specified the dates. No wonder that the detestable sentiment avowed in Cardinal Allen's book, that it was not only lawful, but honourable, to kill the excommunicated, should be supported by the practices, as well as the applause, of the many.-See an account of Cardinal Allen's admonition to the nobility and people of England, in Fuller's Church History, cent. xvi, p. 196. Cambden, indeed, tells us that "in the English Seminary at Rheims some there were who, with a certain astonishment, admiring and reverencing the omnipotency of the Bishop of Rome, did believe that the bull of Pius Quintus against Elizabeth was dictated by the Holy Ghost. These men persuaded themselves, and others that eagerly desired and itched after the glory of martyrdom, that it was a meritorious act to kill such princes as were excommunicated; yea, that they were martyrs who lost their lives on that account."-See Annales Rerum Anglicarum Regnante Elizabetha Angl. Lond. 1688, fol. p. 216. Even some of the staunchest adherents of popery have, after the maturest deliberation, come to the conclusion that the Protestant Reformation was mainly produced by the flagrant abuses of power in the Romish church. See a copious extract from Fleury's Eccles. Hist. in Jortin's Remarks, vol. v, p. 72–181, wherein the cardinal does not scruple to make this confession.

human eye ever beheld—were plausibly ascribable to no other cause than the monstrous corruptions and delusions of

popery.

Setting aside the protestant prejudices of our historian, it was natural for him to think of the evils which he saw around him, and which were to be traced to the same cause. He knew, too, that the reigning monarch was secretly hostile to the established religion; the heir presumptive anti-christ himself; and both the brothers, to their eternal disgrace, disposed to have recourse to the Roman catholic powers for supplies of men and arms in the prosecution of designs which, if successful, might again render England tributary to the holy see. Under such circumstances, when we review the facts and the persons by whom he was surrounded, and these persons, also, environed by a rampart of sovereigns leagued against the pure faith of England, it is not in the least wonderful that Burnett, fully aware of the real aim and object of the Roman court, ever to grasp at the ascendant, should manifest the most deep-rooted abhorrence of it, and fill so many of his pages with dismal forebodings of the wide-spreading increase of popery. In those days, indeed, few would have deemed the opinion an aberration from the mark of truth, that the complexion of the events and transactions then passing before them argued more for the extinction than for the durability of protestantism, and the confirmation of British liberty. Swift, however, who never misses an ironical stroke at Burnett (for he so hated this prelate as always to treat him, says Dr. Johnson, like one whom he is glad of an opportunity to insult), ridicules his pious fears of the Roman see again establishing its pretensions to spiritual sway in these kingdoms, by representing him as a person "who can smell popery at five hundred miles distance better than fanaticism just under his

nose.

See a Preface to the Bishop of Sarum's introduction, vol. iv, p. 340, Swift's Works, edited by Walter Scott. If the "witty dean," instead of giving vent to his sarcastic humour at our historian's frequent and hasty repetitions of his prefaces and introductions, had fairly attacked those parts in them which were open to just censure-for example, had he pointed out when the bishop had formed a wrong or precipitate judgment of the labours of his predecessors-his remarks would then have been well worth our serious attention. John Fox, "famous to posterity," says Strype, "for his immense labours in his Acts and Monuments," four editions of which, huge folios, were published in the reign of Elizabeth, and which embody a mass of original matter amply illustrative of our civil and ecclesiastical history; a work which is a complete picture of the era it represents, and that may be almost said to confirm the history of the Reformation, is alluded to by Burnett in