178 OBSERVATIONS ON BISHOP BURNETT'S 
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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 justi- 
fiable on the footing of self-defence; and those disabilities compared 
by some to the edicts of arbitrary power, were then absolutely neces- 
sary 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 Hol- 
land, and the fires of Smithfield—some of the bloodiest atrocities the 
* Lord Clarendon calis 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 wicked- 
ness.” — 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 Car- 
dinal 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 astonish- 
ment, 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 mar- 
tyrs 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. 
