182 OBSERVATIONS ON BISHOP BURNETT’S 
for a time, our forefathers were delivered from one thraldom only to 
be subject to another. The truth is, that, with very few exceptions, 
the age of the Reformation was an age of mutual persecution. The 
only great man across whose mind floated the beautiful vision of to- 
leration, was Sir Thomas More; but he may be said to have dis- 
carded such fancies as so many pernicious fooleries, when he flogged 
the Templar Bainham in his garden at Chelsea, and when afterwards 
he stood by on his being racked in the Tower. It would, however, 
have increased the reputation of Burnett for the wisdom of the prac- 
tical maxims which he occasionally derives from the events passing 
before him, if he had shown that, from the first establishment of 
Christianity down to the era of the Reformation, the principles of to- 
leration had never been rightly understood ; and that our reformers 
had so widely mistaken this matter as to forget that it was not lawful 
for them to attack each other with any other sword than “ the sword 
of the Spirit, which is the word of God:” yet intolerance, unhappily 
as it may have effected their personal conduct, found no place in the 
Liturgy and Articles of our church. 
Of a work which has had the unexampled honour of receiving the 
thanks of both Houses of Parliament,* and of being translated into 
the audacious impugner of the Christian verities would have been delivered 
up to the secular arm to be committed to the flames, notwithstanding all his 
blasphemies, if it had not formed such a leading feature in the policy of the 
reformers to guard, by acts as well as arguments, against the much-dreaded 
charge that their separation from the Romish church implied the heretical 
violation of the catholic faith. Nothing can be juster here than the remark 
of Bishop Warburton. ‘“ The other reformers, such as Luther, Calvin, and 
their followers, understood so little in what true charity consists, that they 
carried with them into the reformed churches that very spirit of persecution 
which had driven them from the church of Rome.”—See Notes on “ Essay 
on Criticism,” in Pope’s Works, vol. i, p. 222. 
* In the journal of the House of Commons, 3rd December, 1680, there is 
this entry, ‘‘ Ordered that the thanks of this House be given to Dr Burnett 
for his book entitled The History of the Reformation of the Church of England.” 
And in the journal of the House of Lords, 3rd January, 1689, “ Thanks were 
ordered to be given to the Rev. Dr. Burnett for the great service rendered 
by him to this kingdom, and to the protestant religion, in writing the His- 
tory of the Reformation so truly and exactly; and that he be desired to pro- 
ceed in the perfecting what he further intends therein with all convenient 
speed. And it is further ordered that the said Dr. Burnett be, and is hereby 
recommended to the Lords the Bishops for some ecclesiastical preferment.” 
We suppose the bishops thought that what was the business of all was not the 
business of any ; for preferment he had none from this recommendation. In 
these times, parliament goes right to the crown, which answers better. 
