A high value attaches to the first edition of this book, wherein the author essayed to show what the primitive Gospel really was, what alterations had been gradually made in it, and what advantages and disadvantages had therefrom ensued. Bury, many years before, in 1648, had known what it was to be led from his college by a file of musketeers, and forbidden to return to Oxford or his fellowship under pain of death, because he had the courage in those days to read the prayers of the Church. So he had some justification for ascribing his anonymous work to "a true son of the Church"; and his motive was the promotion of that charity and toleration which breathes in its every page. The King had summoned a Convocation, to make certain changes in the Litany, and, if possible, to reconcile ecclesiastical differences; he even dreamt of uniting the Protestant Churches of England and of the Continent, and his Comprehension Bill, had it passed Parliament, might have made the English Church a really national Church; and it was from his sympathy with the broad ideas of the King that Bury wrote his pamphlet, 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.