376 OBSERVATIONS ON BISHOP BURNETT'S 
Nothing, indeed, can be easier for Burnett than to refute these op- 
ponents whenever they descend into particulars, and quit that decla- 
matory style of abuse, which constitutes their strength, from the con- 
fidence with which it is advanced, and the difficulty with which it 
is disproved. Whenever Varillas is so much off his guard as to ha- 
zard any specific assertions, our historian is completely successful in 
shewing, not only how very weak a foundation they have, but in- 
deed, upon what utter fallacies and entire misapprehensions they 
rest. These fallacies are the most glaring in Le Grand’s attack. 
What tyro in history, for instance, would be weak enough to believe, 
on the bare dictum of this historian, that they who made such a 
noble stand for the outraged rights of conscience and liberty—they 
to whom we are indebted for a purer form of Christianity, are to be 
regarded only as false prophets? that none could be more ignorant? 
than Thomas Cromwell? and that Lord William Russell—who has 
left, so bright a name in British story—was ever ready to disturb the 
public tranquillity, and to overturn the fundamental laws of the 
state? When Le Grand could indulge in these notable extrava- 
gances, Burnett may surely be justified for parting with his antago- 
nist in a tone unusually contemptuous ; feeling no triumph in his 
victory*® over one, whose prejudices were so inveterate that he 
28 We read in Cavendish’s interesting and authentic life of the great car- 
dinal, that upon a bill of articles being brought into the House of Commons 
to condemn Wolsey of treason, Cromwell “inveighed so discreetly, with such 
witty persuasions and deep reasons, that the same could take no effect.” 
Singer’s edit. It is also related by Fox, that whatsoever articles and inter- 
rogatories the commissioners from the king propounded to Cromwell, when 
a prisoner in the Tower, “they could put nothing unto him, either concern- 
ing matters ecclesiastical or temporal, wherein he was not more ripened 
and more furnished than they themselves.” 
29 In one instance, Burnett very properly admits that his opponent stood 
“upon the vantage ground.” ‘I must confess,” observes he, “that M. le 
Grand has something of reason on his side, in what he says concerning Ro- 
dulphus, whom I believed to have been Campeggio’s bastard, He proves, 
however, outjof Sigonius, who writes the life of that cardinal, that Rodul- 
phus was his legitimate son. Sigonius is a very good author, and I acquiesce 
in his authority. But had M.le Grand but cast his eyes upon the English 
edition he would have seen that it was not without sufficient ground that I 
called:Rodulphus bastard, since I quote the very discourse wherein he was 
so called, which was composed by Sir William Thomas, secretary of the 
privy council, under the title of the “ English Pilgrim.” I had the misfortune 
not to have seen the life of that prelate written by Sigonius; so that it is only 
a fault of omission, which the author would aggravate with a malicious inven- 
tion.—See Dr. Burnett’s answer and vindication of him to Joachim le Grand’s 
Refutation of the two first books of the * History of the Reformation.” 
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