It must be owned, that, with all Bishop Burnet's good qualities, there are particulars in his history which give colour for this accusation. His opinions were often hastily adopted, and of course sometimes awkwardly retracted, and his patrons were frequently changed. Thus, he vindicated the legality of divorce for barrenness on the part of the wife, and even that of polygamy, in his resolution of two important cases of conscience. These were intended to pave the way for Charles divorcing his barren wife Catherine, or marrying another; and so raising a family of his own to succeed him, instead of the Duke of York. These opinions he formally retracted. Notwithstanding his zeal for liberty, his first work is said by Swift to have been written in defense of arbitrary power. Above all, his great intimacy with the Dukes of Hamilton and Lauderdale, the King and the Duke of York, the Pope and the Prince of Orange; in short, his having the address to attach himself for a time to almost every leading character, whom he had an opportunity of approaching, gives us room to suspect, that if Burnet did not change his opinions, he had at least the art of disguising such as could not be accommodated to those of his immediate patron. When the king demanded that Burnet should be delivered up by the States, he threatened, in return, to justify himself, by giving an account of the share he had in affairs for twenty years past; in which he intimated, he might be driven to mention some particulars, which would displease the king. This threat, as he had enjoyed a considerable share of his confidence when Duke of York, may seem, in some degree, to justify Dryden's heavy charge against him, of availing himself of past confidence to criminate former patrons. It is remarkable, also, that even while he was in the secret of all the intrigues of the Revolution, and must have considered it as a near attempt, he continued to assert the doctrine of passive obedience; and in his letter to Middleton, in vindication of his conduct against the charge of high treason, there is an affectation of excessive loyalty to the reigning monarch. Against these instances of dissimulation, forced upon him perhaps by circumstances, but still unworthy and degrading, we may oppose many others, in which, when his principles and interest were placed at issue, he refused to serve the latter at the expence of the former. Note XXX. _His praise of foes is venomously nice; So touched, it turns a virtue to a vice._--P. 235.