370 OBSERVATIONS ON BISHOP BURNETT'S 
realm, that would not desire the offence, without mercy, to be pun- 
ished to the example of all others.” 
In estimating, however, Cranmer’s character, it is but common 
justice’ to him to remember that he grew into greatness under disas- 
trous influences, that he lived in a semi-barbarous court, the sove- 
reign of which was at one time a cool, reasoning, deliberate tyrant, 
at another, so possessed with those furies of the mind which make 
men rage and storm like the sea, that he tossed all the duties of jus- 
tice and honour to the winds when they offered any contradiction to 
the indulgence of his lusts and passions ;'° being of so daring and do- 
mineering a temper that it has been said of him, “that he dreaded 
nothing less awful than the falling of the heavens. Under such a 
prince,'® Cranmer was called, or rather forced, from his lettered so- 
litude, to become the directing and governing head of ecclesiastical 
affairs ; for with his dying breath he declared that he was compelled 
to accept the see of Canterbury ;'? and it was only by trimming 
his sail to every wind, by a compromise to the over-ruling difficul- 
ties of his situation, that he could hope to preserve even his life, 
much less to accomplish any of the great plans of good which he had 
formed for his country. It might have been expected of him that 
he would set his face “ like a flint” against all Henry’s unjustifiable 
acts of turpitude and flagitiousness. But had he been endowed by 
nature with the inflexible courage and firmness of a Martin Luther 
or a John Knox, and exhibited them before a man who was above 
26 Swift styles him, in his usual coarse way, “an infernal beast,,’ with re- 
ference only to his spoliations of the church, which many, in these days, would 
designate as church reforms. Granville Sharp, in his well-known treatise 
upon the Greek Article, considers him to be one of the horns of the beast. 
“A judgment,” says he, alluding to Rev. chap. xvii, v. 16, “first begun by 
our English horn, Henry VIII.” 
1° The following judicious apology is offered by Dr. Parr for the tempo- 
rizing compliances of Cranmer :—“It was quite impossible to suppose that 
with such a monarch as Henry VIII, and in such a disturbed condition of 
things, civil and ecclesiastical, human wisdom and human virtue could, in all 
cases, have enabled any human being to preserve his innocence.”—See his 
works. 
17 “T protest before you,” was the archbishop’s solemn asseveration in 
the presence of the commissioners of Oxford, “that there never was man 
came more unwillingly to a bishopric than I did to that. Insomuch that 
when King Henry did send for me in post, that I should come over from 
Germany, I prolonged my journey by seven weeks the least, thinking he would 
be forgetful of me in the meantime.”—See Ellis’s Historical Letters, vol. ii, 
p. 42. 
