366 OBSERVATIONS ON BISHOP BURNE‘T'S 
sages, no doubt, may be selected from the archbishop’s writings, es- 
pecially from his celebrated work on the Sacrament, of great pith 
and pointedness of expression, full of impassioned vividness, with 
strong and masculine eloquence. But the style of his performances 
is, in general, rather prolix and cumbrous ; some of his protracted 
sentences weary and exhaust the mind ; in others, there is a mani- 
fest want of lucidness of arrangement. Yet to attain perspicuity in 
his compositions, seems to have been the highest object of his ambi- 
tion, if we may judge from one of his own observations, where he 
flatters himself that he has ‘made more clearly appear the light 
from the darkness, the truth from false sophistical subtleties, and 
the certain word of God from men’s dreams and fantastical inven- 
tions.” It is extremely unfair, however, to conclude that because 
Burnett does not proclaim Cranmer’s English style to be incompa- 
rable, his diction always lucid, nervous, elegant, and varied, he 
therefore sought to impugn the powerful intellect of him who had 
the principal share in the compilation of our Articles, Homilies, and 
Liturgy, to whom the nation owes so large a debt of gratitude for 
his admirable conduct of our Reformation, from its earliest com- 
mencement under Henry VIII to the accession of Edward VJ. 
With still more palpable unfairness, it is asserted that Burnett 
was decidedly hostile to the memory of Cranmer, because he cen- 
sured the share which the archbishop had in the condemnation of 
Lambert, Anne Askew, George Van Pare, Frith, Joan Boucher, and 
other religious offenders ; particularly making to the young king 
the most urgent solicitations to bring the last named delinquent to 
the stake. In speaking of this misdeed, our historian attempts to 
spread over it a most bewildering gloss, palliating it in these vague 
and inconsistent terms: ‘“ One thing was certain, that what he did 
in this matter flowed from no cruelty of temper in him, no man 
being further from that black disposition of mind; but it was truly 
the effect of those principles by which he governed himself.”"° In 
them. Surely, then, there is nothing far-fetched in the suppositions that the 
bolder views and stronger talents of Ridley may be displayed in these notes. 
Even Strype throws out this conjecture, that the archbishop was the penner, 
or at least the great director, of the Articles, with the assistance, as is very 
probable, of Bishop Ridley.— Mem. of Cranmer, p. 272. 
10 Hist. of the Reform. vol. ii, p. 232. A contemporary of Burnett—one, 
we should suppose, who held “a Roman pen”—in allusion to this act of 
Cranmer’s, remarks that “he even went out of his way to glut his thirst for 
human blood, signing uncanonically the warrant for the execution of Sey- 
mour, the Lord High Admiral, which was contrary for a peer of parliament 
