“HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION.” 185 
nett’s fervid and exalted piety—from one so uniformly earnest in his 
devotional feelings—that he would have pointedly described Cran- 
mer as a blessed instrument in the hands of a gracious Providence 
for the introduction and advancement of the-great work of the Re- 
formation in these realms ; that he would have pressed upon the no- 
tice of his readers Cranmer’s unlooked-for visit to Waltham, as af- 
fording a strong—we would almost add, an overpowering—evidence 
of a special interposing Providence ; for assuredly there is nothing 
weak or superstitious in believing that in the leading epochs of hu- 
man affairs the hand of an Almighty Contriver is plainly discerni- 
ble. Had this sentiment been more frequently inscribed on the 
pages of Burnett, “It is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in 
our eyes ;” had it been more intimately incorporated in the narra- 
tive, when speaking of our religious reformation ; had he viewed its 
establishment less with reference to human than divine agency ;* 
we have no hesitation in asserting that those persons who conceive, 
and among them are to be found men of the profoundest intellect, 
that Providence, from first to last, superintended the development 
and consolidation of our Reformation, would, instead of accusing him 
of a mistaken zeal, been more disposed to consider his work as a 
monument of wisdom than they do now from the omission of such a 
course of reasoning. In a word, it should be broadly and manifestly 
the design of the historian of that great moral and religious revolu- 
tion, always to recognize the workings of Divine Providence in it, 
that the reader may have no occasional misgivings of his writing 
more like a worldly-minded politician than a well-instructed Chris- 
tian. This apology, however, may be fairly offered for Burnett’s 
large digressions on the civil history, not only of England, but of 
Europe at large, that from the influence which state politics then 
exercised on ecclesiastical affairs, the latter is almost unintelligible 
without a frequent reference to the former: for, as Priestley justly 
observes, in his encomium on this history, “ Never were the affairs 
of the church and state so intimately connected as during that pe- 
riod.”’+ 
In making these remarks, and in presuming to think that the ex- 
cellencies of the performance are not always upon a scale commensu- 
rate with the magnitude of the subject, we are sensible that we should 
« “The Reformation,” says a pious writer, “ will ever be considered as a 
great event in the divine dispensation by all true members of the Church of 
Christ, to the end of time.”—Dr. Buchanan’s Three Eras of Light. 
+ Lectures on History, p. 209. 
VOL, IX., NO. XXVI, 24 
