14 REMARKS UPON BISHOP BURNETt's 



guides and comforters of the people, will not hesitate to pronounce 

 that he was despicable as an ecclesiastic, and hateful as a man. — 

 While those who are not of this opinion will, like myself, trace the 

 principles of that conduct which has been the theme of such copious 

 invectives, — which has heaped on his name, for an hundred years, 

 the charges of spleen, malice, and ingratitude — to an overpowering 

 zeal, and to a fixed determination of maintaining the cause of reli- 

 gion and virtue, through good report and evil report, and of hold- 

 ing nothing so high in policy, as the conscientious discharge of his 

 christian duties. 



The truth is, that Burnett had evidently formed to himself a 

 Viery lofty standard of attainable perfection in the discharge of his 

 episcopal functions; and he seems never to have remitted his exer- 

 tions to elevate and conform himself to it in every particular.- 

 Others of his contemporaries may have brought more precious con- 

 tributions to sacred literature, — may have fought the battles of 

 orthodoxy better than he, — may have been surrounded with proud- 

 er triumphs of authorship, — ^but his name, associated with the- 

 strict and undeviating performance of the primitive and essential 

 duties of his office, will go down to posterity in one of the most 

 glorious pages of ecclesiastical history. I am not afraid, in this 

 respect, to link his claims with those of any one who has worn the 

 mitre since the Reformation. 



Thus strongly led to invest the Prelacy with that deep and aw- 

 ful responsibility, that nothing in the concerns of earthliness could 

 be compared to it, he yearned for the amendment of the parochial 

 clergy ; connecting with their exertions, the renovation of the land. 

 But in bending the whole force of his mind to produce the appa- 

 ratus of a preaching, pious, and popular ministry, the proper object 

 and end of the national church, we are not to be surprised, that he 

 should have given as much offence as if he had been attempting 

 some violent reform — as if he had stepped out beyond the direct 

 and conscientious line of his duty. To the superficial eye, a fervent 

 attachment to an institution appears, indeed, perfectly incompatible 

 with a keen and painful sense of its defects. And Burnett at one 

 time, for assuming the intrepidity of a prophet of old, and denounc- 

 ing, in the ears of royalty itself, all the profligacies which disgraced 



