200 OBSERVATIONS ON BISHOP BURNETT'S 
ecclesiastical, and not all that. If any one should take the pains to 
examine in like manner the civil history intermixed therewith, it 
may be feared that not a few errors and defects may be discovered 
in that part of it.” 
Now Burnett felt that his antagonist’s name stood too high in re- 
pute in the learned world to be disregarded, however he may have 
disgraced it on this occasion. Accordingly, he noticed Wharton’s 
strictures in a letter addressed to the Bishop of Lichfield and Co- 
ventry. And if, after the perusal of this epistle, any will deny him 
the character of a candid and high-principled man, actuated in the 
composition of his history by one uniform and constant spirit of 
moral and religious truth, and that he was urged to this vindication 
of it by nothing so much as that honest indignation against imputed 
guilt, which is the last thing extinguishable in a virtuous mind ; we 
shall set them down as incapable of appreciating the dignity and 
independence of conscious integrity, and as chargeable with the most 
disingenuous misrepresentation. But the bishop shall speak for 
himself; for those relations are commonly of most value, as Dr. 
Johnson justly observes, “in which the writer tells his own story.” 
«¢ As to the charge of falsehood that comes over so often, ’tis 
plain, by his frequent repeating of it, that he intended it should 
stick, I can and do affirm it to my knowledge, I did not willingly 
mistake or misrepresent, nor so much as suppress any one particular 
relating to that great transaction. If I was called upon to say this 
with the greatest solemnities of feligion, upon oath, or at the sacra- 
ment, I am sure I could do it with a good conscience, I have also 
sent for Mr. Angus, of St. Dunstan, who was then my amanuensis, 
not having leisure and opportunities at present to enter into the 
detail of small matters, and have asked him if he can imagine how 
there can be so many mistakes about dates in the transcribing of the 
records; for this author scarce allows one of them to be true, and 
therefore he thinks better credit is due to the history ; and that the 
records will be of little value if once there appears just reason to 
suspect the care or the fidelity of the transcriber ; and assures he 
the reader that ‘of those dates which he has examined, he has 
found near as many to be false as true. Mr. Angus was amazed 
at this, and said he was ready to take his oath upon it that, though 
he himself used his utmost diligence to examine every paper that he 
copied out, yet I was never satisfied with that, but examined all 
over again myself; so that I may sincerely say what I once writ on 
a very solemn occasion, at the making of my will, when I went out 
of England, that I writ that work with the same fidelity as I should 
