361 
CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS ON BISHOP BURNETT'S 
“HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION OF THE 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND.” 
(Continued from page 208), 
Amone the opponents of Burnett is to be numbered Hickes, now 
remembered chiefly for his works on northern literature. ‘The 
bitterness of theological odium, sharpened by party rancour, urged 
him to assail his performance. He was the leader of that party in 
the church which could not frame the lips to pronounce the oaths of 
abjuration in King William’s time. Before the Revolution he held 
the deanery of Worcester. Burnett had impeached the consistency 
of his conduct,” in first admitting the excellence of the reformation 
in religion and government proposed to be made by the Prince of 
Orange, and afterwards in denying that it was calculated to pro- 
mote the interest, honour, and glory of the nation. But, with all 
Hicke’s acuteness and ability—with all his disposition to pounce, 
with a lyncean quickness, upon every misstatement of facts or rea- 
soning in the enduring volumes of Burnett—he has only ventured 
to bring this one explicit charge against him, that he had published 
a letter of Luther falsely and imperfectly. 
As it was the singular lot of Burnett to be so often vilified and 
insulted, in his character as a divine, a scholar, and a man, the jus- 
tice due to his memory compels us to give the substance of some of 
his replies in his own words ; because there is that appeal to certain 
and momentous facts which must satisfy the unbiassed that they 
have the impress of truth upon them. Besides, these replies being 
known to so few, it is to be presumed that alone will exempt them 
from the charge of tediousness in the estimation of the curious. 
Adverting, then, to Hickes’s allegation, the bishop commences by 
saying that “ it was this accusation which determined him to write 
these reflections ; and that he could otherwise have despised the 
author’s malice with the same patience and easinesss that he had 
* Many and great, however, are the defects of his Thesaurus Septentriona- 
lis. In prosecuting, for instance, his etymological researches into the dia- 
lects of our continental ancestors, Hickes has committed the singular blun- 
der of confounding the old Saxon and Franca, which are so very opposite. 
* “T can assure the world,” says he, (p. 57-8), “that in the list of the di- 
vines who were represented in wishing that the then prince would engage in 
our defence, the late Dean of Worcester (Dr. George Hickes) was named for 
one, how truly he best knows.”—See Reflections upon Dr. Hickes in some Let- 
ters upon Dr. Burnett and Dr. Tillotson. ? 
VOL, IX., NO. XXVII. 46 
