Book burning -- Great Britain; Censorship -- Great Britain -- History; Prohibited books -- Great Britain -- History
About the same time that Sacheverell's sermons were the sensation
of London, a sermon preached in Dublin on the Presbyterian side
was attended there with the same marks of distinction. In
November 1711 Boyse's sermon on _The Office of a Scriptural
Bishop_ was burnt by the hangman, at the command of the Irish
House of Lords. Unfortunately one cannot obtain this sermon
without a great number of others, amongst which the author
embedded it in a huge and repulsive folio comprising all his
works. The sermon was first preached and printed in 1709, and
reprinted the next year: it enters at length into the historical
origin of Episcopacy in the early Church, the author alluding as
follows to the Episcopacy aimed at by too many of his own
contemporaries: "A grand and pompous sinecure, a domination over
all the churches and ministers in a large district managed by
others as his delegates, but requiring little labour of a man's
own, and all this supported by large revenues and attended with
considerable secular honours." Boyse could hardly say the same in
these days, true, no doubt, as it was in his own. Still, that
even an Irish House of Lords should have seen fit to burn his
sermon makes one think that the political extinction of that body
can have been no serious loss to the sum-total of the wisdom of
the world.
The last writer to incur a vote of burning from the House of
Commons in Queen Anne's reign was William Fleetwood, Bishop of
St. Asaph; and this for the preface to four sermons he had
preached and published: (1) on the death of Queen Mary, 1694; (2)
on the death of the Duke of Gloucester, 1700; (3) on the death of
King William, 1701; (4) on the Queen's Accession, in 1702. It was
voted to the public flames on June 10th, 1712, as "malicious and
factious, highly reflecting upon the present administration of
public affairs under Her Majesty, and tending to create discord
and sedition among her subjects." The burning of the preface
caused it to be the more read, and some 4,000 numbers of the
_Spectator_, No. 384, carried it far and wide. Probably it was
more read than the prelate's numerous tracts and sermons, such as
his _Essay on Miracles_, or his _Vindication of the Thirteenth of
Romans_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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