Fortunately for the Church of England, Burnet, after a year’s application to the law, changed his course of studies, and applied himself to divinity, for which his father had originally destined him. When eighteen years of age, he was put upon his trial as a probationary preacher, the first step in Scotland towards an admission into orders, both in the Episcopal and in the Presbyterian church. From this epoch in his career, he devoted his life to the service of the church. He improved his notions upon many matters, in those times still unsettled, relative to the rites and ceremonies of the church, by conversing with the learned at the English universities. By foreign travelling, he enlarged his ideas concerning the differences into which learned and pious men fall, upon points of discipline and matters of doctrine. Whilst residing in Holland, he became acquainted with the leading men of the various persuasions tolerated in that country; the Arminians, Papists, Unitarians, Brownists, and Lutherans, all passed under review in his reflecting mind; and, from the observation of the pious dispositions and high motives, of which he met with instances among all professing Christians, he drew this satisfactory and benevolent conclusion, that nothing but general charity could be acceptable to the great Ruler of men; he learned to abhor severity, and to see the beauty and wisdom of universal toleration. Thus prepared for the eminent station which he afterwards filled, and for the great part which he had to act, Burnet, during a protracted intercourse with the kings and nobles of the land, held fast his integrity. When chaplain to Charles the Second, he remonstrated with him on his licentious course of life, fearless of the consequences to himself. He laboured with as little success to convert James from the doctrines of papacy. At a time when silence would have best aided his preferment in the church, he published his History of the Reformation, for which he received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament. Nor did he lose any opportunity of publicly admonishing, and of privately reclaiming, the abandoned members of the aristocracy; and of calling sinners of all ranks and conditions to repentance. His preaching was earnest, unstudied, emphatic, effective. He improved upon the Scottish mode of giving premeditated discourses from memory, and by allotting many hours of the day to meditation on any given subject, and then accustoming himself to speak upon those aloud, he attained a remarkable facility in that mode of religious instruction, which is, of all others, when well acquired, the most effective.[314]