It was whilst this excellent and energetic man was chaplain to Charles the Second, an unwilling witness of the corruptions of the court, that he was requested to visit a female of abandoned character, who had been treading the paths of destruction with the celebrated Wilmot Earl of Rochester. Burnet, at this time without any parochial duty, never refused his aid to those who sought it. He went to the sinner, and left her penitent; but the good which he did ceased not here, but shed its beams forth in a “naughty world.” The Earl of Rochester, hearing of the manner in which the divine had reclaimed the unfortunate partner of his guilt, sent for Burnet; and during a whole winter, once in every week, went over with him all those topics by which infidelity attacks the christian religion. The judgment of the sceptic, Rochester, was convinced; his conviction of the importance of moral duty established; his proud spirit laid prostrate; his opinions and his deportment entirely changed. He died a sincere penitent; whilst Burnet, in bequeathing to posterity the memorial of the sceptical difficulties, of the true contrition, of this misled and sinful man, has left to the infatuated and to the erring a legacy of inestimable price. In the words of Dr. Johnson, speaking of the bishop’s account of these conferences, entitled “Some Passages in the Life of John Earl of Rochester,” “the critic ought to read it for its elegance, the philosopher for its argument, the saint for its piety.”[315] Burnet, both by his own account and that of his biographer, appears to have been very unwilling to undertake the charge now offered to him by the King, and pressed upon him by the Princess. “I used,” he says, “all possible endeavours to decline the office.” Having once, however, consented, he devoted himself with his usual ardour to the important task of educating the Prince. His admirable observations on education, in the conclusion of his History, show how excellently qualified the bishop was for the task. He went beyond his age, and was devoid of the narrow views and prejudices of his time. The great design of instruction was, as he justly thought, to inculcate great and noble sentiments, to give general information, to avoid pedantry, and to represent virtue and religion in the true light, as the only important, the only stable acquisitions in this sublunary state. He looked with regret on the errors committed by parents of the highest rank, who, lavish in other respects, were narrow in their notions of expenditure on education; he regarded education as “the foundation of all that could be proposed for bettering the next age.” He considered that “it should be one of the chief cares of all government.”[316]