BOOKS BURNED BY THE COMMON HANGMAN.
(Vol. viii., pp. 272. 346.)
To the list of these literary auto da fé's we may well add the burning of Bishop Burnet's famous Pastoral Letter, which was censured by the House of Commons, January, 1692, and was burned by the common hangman. The offence contained in it was the ascribing the title of William III. to the crown of England to a right of conquest. A recollection of this gives additional point to the irony of Atterbury in attacking Wake:
"William the Conqueror is another of the pious patterns he recommends, 'who would suffer nothing,' he says, 'to be determined in any ecclesiastical causes without leave and authority first had from him.'... His present majesty is not William the Conqueror; and can no more by our constitution rule absolutely either in Church or State than he would if he could: his will and pleasure is indeed a law to all his subjects; not in a conquering sense, but because his will and pleasure is only that the laws of our country should be obeyed, which he came over on purpose to rescue, and counts it his great prerogative to maintain; and contemns therefore, I doubt not, such sordid flattery as would measure the extent of his supremacy from the Conqueror's claim."—Atterbury's Rights, Powers, and Privileges of Convocation, pp. 158—160.
Atterbury never misses a hit at Burnet when he can conveniently administer one, and the Bishop endeavours to smile even while he winces:
"He writes with just and due respect of the king and the present constitution. This has come so seldom from that corner that it ought to be the more considered. I will not give that scope to jealousy as to suspect that this was an artifice; but accept it sincerely," &c.—The Bishop of Sarum's Reflections on the Rights, Powers, &c.. p. 4.
W. Fraser.
Tor-Mohun.
The following, may come under the list wanted by Balliolensis:
"The covenant itself, together with the act for erecting the high court of justice, that for subscribing the engagement, and that for declaring England a Commonwealth, were ordered to be burned by the hands of the hangman. The people assisted with great alacrity on this occasion."—From Hume, Reign of Charles II., edit. London, 1828, p. 762.
On a copy of La Défense de la Réformation, &c., par I. Claude, à La Haye, 1683, I noted the following about thirty years ago as a striking passage, but cannot now recollect from whence I took it. This book was condemned by the Pope to be burned, on which circumstance the editor of an old edition of it very appositely observes:
"Books have souls as well as men, which survive their martyrdom, and are not burnt, but crowned by the flames that encircle them. The Church of Rome has quickly felt there was nothing combustible but the paper. The truth flew upward like the angel from Manoah's sacrifice, untouched by the fire, and unsullied by the smoke, and found a safe refuge at the footstool of the God of Truth."
G. N.