amphlet, intending not to
publish it, but to present it to the members of Convocation
severally. Unfortunately he showed or presented a few copies to a
few friends, with the natural result that the work became known,
the author admonished for heresy and driven from his rectorship,
and the book publicly burnt, by a vote of the university, in the
area of the schools (August 19th, 1690). He should have reflected
that it is as little the part of a discreet man to try to
reconcile religious factions as to seek to separate fighting
tigers.

The unexpected commotion roused by his book led the author to
republish it with great modifications and omissions; a fact which
much diminishes the interest of the second edition of 1691. For
instance, the preface to the second edition omits this passage of
the first: "The Church of England, as it needs not, so it does
not, forbid any of its sons the use of their own eyes; if it
did, this alone would be sufficient reason not only to distrust
but to condemn it." Nevertheless both editions alike contain many
passages remarkable for their breadth of view no less than for
their admirable expression. What, for instance, could be better
than the passage wherein he speaks of the priests cramming the
people with doctrines, "so many in numbers that an ordinary mind
cannot retain them; so perplexed in matter that the best
understanding cannot comprehend them; so impertinent to any good
purpose that a good man need not regard them; and so unmentioned
in Scripture that none but the greatest subtlety can therein
discover the least intimations of them"? Or again: "No king is
more independent in his own dominions from any foreign
jurisdiction in matters civil, than every Christian is within his
own mind in matters of faith"? What Doctor of Divinity of these
days would speak as courageously as this one did two hundred
years ago? So let any one be prepared to give a good price for a
first edition copy of _The Naked Gospel_, and, when obtained, to
study as well as honour it.

History is apt to repeat itself, and therefore it is of interest
to note here that about a century and a half later (March 1849)
Exeter College was again stirred to the burning point, and that
in connection with a book which, apart from its intrinsic
interest, enjoys the distinction of having been actually the last
to be burnt in England. In the _Morning Post_ of March 9th, 1849,
it is written: "We are informed that a work recentl