368 OBSERVATIONS ON BISHOP BURNETT'S 
bury, “that it agreed better with the maxims of the casuist than 
with the prelate’s sincerity.” When Cranmer was consecrated he 
swore canonical obedience to the pontiff; but before he took the 
oath he called four witnesses into St. Stephen’s Chapel, and in their 
presence declared “ that he did not intend to restrain himself thereby 
from anything to which he was bound by his duty to God or the 
king, or from taking part in any reformation of the English Church 
which he might judge to be required.” Now surely, toa plain un- 
derstanding, not addicted to sophistical refinements, the only ques- 
tion here is, ought not Cranmer, instead of receiving the bulls from 
Rome, with a perfect knowledge,of the obligations thereby imposed, 
to have explicitly told the king that, already resolved to oppose the 
papal authority, his conscience would not allow him to accept the 
vacant archbishopric from any other hands than those of his ma- 
jesty, or to acknowledge any foreign ecclesiastical supremacy ? 
Many of the props of good government and religion must fall, if 
Cranmer’s conduct be justifiable. Where, in short, is the man of 
virtue who can approve it? where the man of wisdom who can be 
satisfied, in the instance before us, that a promissory obligation could 
be got rid of without some declination from the Christian character ? 
For he who consents to take a prescribed oath, no matter whether 
the terms by which he binds himself to its observance be foolish or 
wise, cannot surely evade it without being guilty of a breach of 
faith. Weighing Cranmer’s conduct, then, with the largest allow- 
ance to human frailty and human error—with the amplest indul- 
gence for the exigency of a pressing occasion, “ which often prevents 
a man from calling into action fixed principles’—we cannot but sub- 
scribe to the opinions of those who maintain it to be utterly inde- 
fensible. 
Reverting, then, to the insinuation of Burnett’s antagonist, that 
he was unfriendly to the reputation of Cranmer, we should say 
that, so far from there being any appearance of a want of heartiness, 
which would excite suspicion and raise disbelief of the truth of that 
statement, it is by no means difficult to produce instances where he 
has glossed over faults in Cranmer which could not be hidden, and 
entirely overlooked others in which more candid historians’? must 
12 Honest old Fuller seems to have been partly of this opinion. ‘ Cran- 
mer,” says he, “ had done noill, and privately many good, offices for the pro- 
testants; yet his cowardly compliance hitherto with popery, against his con- 
science, cannot be excused: serving the times present in his practice, and 
waiting on a future alteration in his hopes and desires.”—Church Hist. p. 371. 
