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1760 mind of his age, but which would now be deemed rather heavy. South has more life and a more popular style; he was therefore more attractive to the courtiers of his day than to the sober citizens, and he has larded his text with what were then deemed sprightly sallies and dashing phrases, but which are now felt as vulgarisms. Both the divines, however, have furnished to our succeeding preachers much gleaning.



Dr. Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, who figures so prominently in the reign of William and Mary, and who rendered such essential service to the establishment of religious liberty, is the great historian of his time. Without his narratives of his own period, we should have a very defective idea of it. With all his activity at court and in parliament, he was a most voluminous writer. His publications amount to no less than a hundred and forty-five, though many of these are mere tracts, and some of them even only single sermons. His earliest productions date from 1669, and they continued, with little intermission, to the time of his death in 1715—a space of forty-six years. His great works are "The Reformation of the Church," in three volumes, folio, 1679, 1681, and 1714; and his "History of Our Own Time," in two volumes, published after his death in 1723 and 1731. Burnet lays no claim to eloquence or too much genius, and he has been accused of a fondness for gossip, and for his self-importance; but the qualities which sink all these things into mere secondary considerations are his honesty and heartiness in the support of sound and liberal principles far beyond the majority of his fellow prelates and churchmen. Whilst many of these were spending their energies in opposing reformation and toleration, and some of them, like Atterbury, were endeavouring to bring back popery and despotism in the person of the pretender, Burnet was incessantly, by word and pen, engaged in assisting to build up and establish those broad and Christian principles under