LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SA^^CROFT. 87 



cessive steps of advancement, and jealous of 

 those whose interests clashed with his, or who 

 rivalled him in his career ; but we rather see 

 him shrinking from those honours which the 

 good opinion of others forced upon him ; and 

 after he was invested with them, bearing them 

 with meekness and humility; less rejoiced at 

 attaining what so many others coveted, than 

 fearful and anxious lest he should fail in pro- 

 perly performing the great duties to which 

 he was called. By persons unfriendly to his 

 memory it has been said, that he was a gloomy 

 ascetic. Bishop Burnet has even thought pro- 

 per to call him '' a man of monastic strictness 

 and abstraction from the world, dry, peevish, 

 and reserved, so that none loved him, and few 

 esteemed him."* If by the monastic strictness 

 imputed to him, it be merely meant that he was 

 simple in all his habits and modes of living, re- 

 strained and moderate in his desires, and exact 

 in the duties of devotion, it will not, and it need 

 not, be pretended that the appellation is wrongly 

 applied to him. But if it be further meant by 

 the terms, that his religious feelings were of a 

 gloomy cast, that he made a merit in practising 

 mortifications and self-denial, that he was an 

 enemy to the innocent pleasures of life, and 



* Burnet's Own Times, v. i. p. 392. 



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