ntellect,
great blemishes were more than compensated by great excellence. Though
often misled by prejudice and passion, he was emphatically an honest
man. Though he was not secure from the seductions of vanity, his spirit
was raised high above the influence either of cupidity or of fear. His
nature was kind, generous, grateful, forgiving. [218] His religious
zeal, though steady and ardent, was in general restrained by humanity,
and by a respect for the rights of conscience. Strongly attached to what
he regarded as the spirit of Christianity, he looked with indifference
on rites, names, and forms of ecclesiastical polity, and was by no means
disposed to be severe even on infidels and heretics whose lives
were pure, and whose errors appeared to be the effect rather of some
perversion of the understanding than of the depravity of the heart. But,
like many other good men of that age, he regarded the case of the Church
of Rome as an exception to all ordinary rules.

Burnet had during some years had an European reputation. His History of
the Reformation had been received with loud applause by all Protestants,
and had been felt by the Roman Catholics as a severe blow. The greatest
Doctor that the Church of Rome has produced since the schism of the
sixteenth century, Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, was engaged in framing an
elaborate reply. Burnet had been honoured by a vote of thanks from one
of the zealous Parliaments which had sate during the excitement of
the Popish plot, and had been exhorted, in the name of the Commons of
England, to continue his historical researches. He had been admitted to
familiar conversation both with Charles and James, had lived on terms of
close intimacy with several distinguished statesmen, particularly with
Halifax, and had been the spiritual guide of some persons of the highest
note. He had reclaimed from atheism and from licentiousness one of the
most brilliant libertines of the age, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester.
Lord Stafford, the victim of Oates, had, though a Roman Catholic, been
edified in his last hours by Burnet's exhortations touching those points
on which all Christians agree. A few years later a more illustrious
sufferer, Lord Russell, had been accompanied by Burnet from the Tower to
the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The court had neglected no means
of gaining so active and able a divine. Neither royal blandishments
nor promises of valuable preferment had been spared. But Burnet, thoug