BUR 



i 



' ' n g Kven him tlu n or before,) except the party 

 l*i ike. deceased wen- denounced excommurticatedi majori 

 utmunicatione, for some grievous and notorious 

 crime, and no man able to testify of his repentance." 

 Anciently, there were other CUHNCS of refusal, par- 

 ticularly in the cast- of heretics, against whom tlurre 

 neci.d provision in the canon law, that if 

 continued in th.'ir hereby, they should not en- 

 joy the prvilegr of Christian burial; but no instan- 



ces of Us tut rcemcnt occur subsequent to the pe- 

 riod of the Reformation. Such as had not received 

 the holy sacrament, at least at Easter, were excluded 

 from Christian burial, by a law of the Lateran coun- 

 cil, which was afterwards adopted by the English 

 church. But all these and other prohibitions are, at 

 this day, considered as obsolete, and the denial of 

 burial is restrained to the excommunicated, the un- 

 baptizcd, and suicides. 



A case occurred lately in England, in which the 

 denial of burial was attempted to be enforced against 

 uters from the established church. The Rev. 

 John Wight Wickes, rector of Wardly-cum-Belton, 

 refused to bury the infant child of two of his parish- 

 ioners, who were Calvinistic Independents, because 

 it had not received Episcopalian baptism. A suit 

 was brought against this clergyman in the Arches 

 Co.irt of Canterbury, for violating the fiSch canon 

 above quoted, in which Sir .1. Nicholl, official prin- 

 cipal ot that court, gave judgment for the plaintiff, 

 chiefly upon the ground, that the church of Eng 

 land had recognised persons, though not baptized in 

 its own forms, yet as validly baptized ; and that it 

 could not mean to exclude from burial all persons 

 who have not been baptized according to the forms 

 of its own liturgy, provided the essence of baptism, 

 according to what has been generally received as such 

 among Christians, has taken place ; but those only 

 who have not been baptized at all by any form which 

 can be recognized as an initiation, a legal and valid 

 initiation into the Christian church. This judgment 

 has given rise to some controversy ; for the substance 

 and merits of which we must refer our readers to the 

 decision of Sir J. Nicholl, with the reasons for it, 

 published hy Mr Gurney ; the Respectful Examina- 

 tion of the Judgment, &c. by the Rev. Charles Dau- 

 beny, LL.B. archdeacon of Sarum, Bath, 1811 ; 

 and the Review of Archdeacon Danbcin/'s Examina- 

 tion, in the Edinhnrgh Christian Instructor for Oc 

 tober 1811. 



The statute 30th Car. II. c. 3. for the encourage- 

 ment of the woollen manufactures, enacts, that no 

 corpse shall be buried in any other stuff than what 

 is made of sheep's wool, on pain of forfeiting L.5. 

 And an affidavit is to be made of such burying be- 

 fore a magistrate, or the officiating minister. Ja- 

 cob's Lam Diet, (z) 



BURKE, EDMUND, a writer distinguished in mo- 

 rals, criticism, and politics, was born in Dublin on 

 the 1st of January 1730. His father was a reputable 

 attorney, and not a Catholic, as has been sometimes 

 asserted. H^ was educated in the academy of 

 Shackleton by a quakerat Ballystore, near Carlow, to 

 whom, for 40 years, during his visits to Ireland, the 

 grateful scholar used regularly to pay his respects. 

 In 1746, he was entered at Dublin College, where 



nun 



he pursued a wide and diversified course of studies* 

 '; in mor.d kcieuce, and took a bachelor's de- 

 gree. The tory nf his studying at St Oner's it 

 denied, apparently on good ground', by his biogra- 

 ph-TB. We hrar, how mg farther about 



him, till he made an unsuccessful attempt for the va- 

 cant professorship of logical the college of Glasgow. 

 Burke, it is said, was passing the old collt ge court 

 gate of that place, when a label affixed to it ttruck 

 nit eye, which had been pasted up as a mere matter 

 of form, inviting all candidate* for the professorship 

 to compete, although it was known that a successor 

 was already fixed upon. Whether Burke made a 

 public competition by the old tyllogittic mode, or 

 was at all a competitor in form, we know not. In 

 IT.'*:!, he came to London, and fixed as a student of 

 law ; and for some time, there is every reason to be- 

 lieve, supported himself by writing for newspapers 

 and magazines. Yet, though hitherto comparatively 

 obscure, he found his way to polite society, distin- 

 guished himt'-lf wherever he was known by the 

 charms of his conversation, and was so far a man of 

 pleasure, as to be supposed to be on intimate terms 

 of friendship with Mrs Woffington, the actress, 

 who^e t-legance of manners was to him like that of 

 Aspasia to Socrates, and contributed a polish to 

 the solid materials of his mind. A decline of his 

 health made him the guest of his friend Dr Nugent, 

 which eventually occasioned his marriage with the 

 daughter of that able physician. 



His first avowed work appeared in 1756, A f 'in- 

 dication of Natural Society, or n vie* of the mi\eria 

 and (>ril\ a taxing to mankind from every specie* of ar- 

 tificial society ; in a letter to Lord * *, by a late 

 noble writer. The noble -writer meant to be suppo- 

 sed was Lord Bolingbroke. Whether Mr Burke't 

 real intention in this work was to represent the worst 

 errors of human institutions, or ironically to shew the 

 weakness of Boiingbroke's arguments against religion 

 founded on Us abuses, by pointing the same inconclu- 

 sive arguments against civil institution*, we know not ; 

 but his work attracted, at its first appearance, very 

 little interest. The reception of his Evay on the 

 Sublime and Beautiful, in 1 757, was much more flat- 

 tering ; and has since preserved his name among the 

 highest writers on the philosophy of taste ; although 

 the errors of much of his system have been since suf- 

 ficiently refuted. The fame of this work is said to 

 have procured him the acquaintance of Reynolds and 

 Johnson. Such, however, was the force of Burke'* 

 mind in conversation, and such was his promptitude ia 

 bringing it to bear on all present points, that we 

 doubt if his introduction to the highett literary cir- 

 cle of his time was owing to his writings. A man 

 who could not be conversed with, (js Johnson said,) 

 while you took shelter with him from a shower under 

 a gateway, without perceiving that he was an extra- 

 ordinary genius, such a man required no treatises to 

 introduce him in any circle. In 1758, he proposed 

 to Dodsley the bookseller, the plan of the Annual 

 Register. He wrote much of the historical part of 

 that work : the general air of which has a candour 

 and a diffuse dignity resembling the unpremeditated 

 effusions of such a mind as hit. His political career 

 may be said to have commenced in 1761, when going 

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