374 OBSERVATIONS ON BISHOP BURNET'I’S 
them—not because they find them established, but because they 
deem them salutary and scriptural—will assuredly pardon Burnett 
for treating such?+ a character without any deference and respect. 
Tle provocation, indeed, which he had received from Parker, was 
quite sufficient to stir up a ferment of indignation in a bosom less 
calm and gentle. For this apostate?’ from the religion of his fore- 
fathers, did not hesitate to say “that the two grand forgeries of 
making Cranmer appear a mere sacramentarian as to doctrine, and 
an Erastian as to discipline, were the grand singularities of this his- 
tory, and the main things that gave it popular vogue and reputation 
with his party ; so that were these two blind stories and the reasons 
depending on them retrenched, it would be like the shaving of 
Samson’s hair, and destroy all the strength peculiar to the history.” 
In allusion also, to Burnett’s propensity to take a share in discus- 
sions—which his antagonists affect to consider solely temporary and 
secular—we have this observation, which, if we may judge from his 
triumphant tone, Parker conceives to cut deep, like the former, into 
the character of the work. ‘Our author would be well advised to 
employ his pains in writing lampoons upon the present princes of 
Christendom, especially his own, which he delights in most, because 
it is the worst thing that he himself can do, than collecting the re- 
cords of former times ; for the first will require time and postage, but 
the second is easily traced in the chimney corner.” Burnett’s com- 
ments on the foregoing passage, however fully we may concur with 
him in his opinion of this detestable? © man, cannot justify his appli- 
24 By the poet, as well as the politician, this prelate was made 
“A figure for the hand of scorn 
To point his slow, unerring finger at.” 
In that humourous but coarse piece of satire, The Rehearsal Transposed, An- 
drew Marvell designates him under the name of Bayes; while his critical 
lashes on his ecclesiastical, political, and other performances, are dealt with a 
most unsparing hand. 
28 Even the noted Father Petre alleges it, in one of his letters, as a mat- 
ter of complaint against Parker, that the quickness of his conversion was not 
calculated to draw others after him to the old religion.—_See A Letter from a 
Jesuit at Liege toa Jesuit at Fribourg, giving an account of the happy pro- 
gress of Religionin England. February 2nd, 1687-8. 
26 We turn with a disgust that amounts to loathing from the utterance 
of such sentiments as the following, in an English prelate. Upon Parker’s 
being asked what was the best body of divinity, his answer was, ‘‘ that which 
could help a man to keep a coach and six horses was unquestionably the best.” 
He had exalted the king’s authority in matters of religion to that impious 
extent, that he condemned the ordinary form of saying the king was under 
