BURNET, Thomas, a distinguished writer, was born at Croft in Yorkshire about the year 1635, but is supposed to have been descended of a Scotish family. His early education he received at the free-school of Northallerton, in the same county, under Thomas Smelt, who used to propose him as an example to the rest of his scholars. On the 26th of June 1651, he was admitted a pensioner of Clare Hall at Cambridge, under the tuition of Tillotson, who continued to remember him with kindness; but in the year 1654, he removed to Christ’s College, on the election of Dr Cudworth to the mastership, and there he obtained a fellowship in the year 1657. In 1661 he became senior proctor of the university. He was successively domestic tutor to Charles duke of Bolton, and to James earl of Ossory, afterwards duke of Ormonde, grandson to the first duke; and by the interest of the latter nobleman he was chosen master of the Charter-house in 1685. Among the electors, some of the bishops opposed him on account of his wearing a lay-habit; but the duke was satisfied that he possessed the more essential qualifications of a life and conversation suitable to his clerical character. After this appointment, he took the degree of D. D. In his capacity of master, he made a noble stand against the admission of a papist named Andrew’ Popham, as a pensioner of the house: on the 26th of December 1686, the king addressed to the governors a letter dispensing with the statutes; but the opposition of the master being vigorously supported by other governors, James deemed it prudent to desist from this illegal attempt.

Dr Burnet had already published his Telluris Theoria sacra. Lond. 1681, 4to. This work attracted an unusual share of the public attention, and he was afterw ards encouraged to exhibit it in an English dress. His Sacred Theory of the Earth was printed in folio, the first part in 1684, and the conclusion in 1689. Addison commended the author in a Latin ode. His fanciful theory was however attacked by Dr Keill, Mr Whiston, and Mr Warren, to all of whom he returned an answ∙er. He had now acquired a high reputation as a man of talents; and after the revolution, he was introduced at court by Archbishop Tillotson, whom he succeeded as clerk of the closet to King William.^[1. Birch’s Life of Tillotson, p. 2Ĵ8. Lond. 1752, 8vo. ] He seemed already to be on the direct road to much higher preferment, when he suddenly marred his own prospects by the publication of a learned and ingenious work, entitled Archoeologiae Philosophicae : sive Doctrina antiqua de Rerum Originibus. Lond. 1692, 4to. The mode in which he discussed the history of the fall of man, excited a great clamour against him; and the king was obliged to remove him from his office at court. Of this book an English translation was executed by Mr Foxton. Lond. 1729, 8vo. Dr Burnet next published [7:5:722]“Remarks upon an Essay concerning Human Understanding, in a Letter address’d to the Author.” Lond. 1697, 4to. “Second Remarks, &c. being a Vindication of the first Remarks against the Answer of Mr Locke, at the end of his Reply to the Lord Bishop of Worcester.” Lond. 1697, 4to. “Third Remarks,” &c. Lond. 1699, 4to. These remarks were answered by Catherine 1 rotter, afterwards Mrs Cockburn, in her “Defence of Mr Locke s Essay, written when she was twenty-three years of age, and printed at London in 1702. He died at the Charterhouse on the 27th of September 1715, at a very advanced age. Two of his works were published several years after his death. De Fide et Officiis Christianorum Liber posthumus. Lond. 1722, 4to. De Statu Mortuorum et Resurgentium Tractatus. Lond. 1723, 4to. Of the first of these works, there are several other editions, one of which was published by Dr Teller of Berlin. Halae Magdeburg. 1786, 8vo. The second has likewise been more than once reprinted; and two English translations were published by Matthias Earbery and John Dennis. The author was evidently a man of genius and learning; but his fancy being sometimes more vigorous than his judgment, he is not on all occasions a very safe guide. In this work he maintains the doctrine of the middle state, the Millennium, and the limited duration of future punishment. Mura tori, an Italian writer of great eminence, published copious animadversions upon it, under .the subsequent title: “De Paradiso Regnique Caelestis Gloria, non expectata Corporum Resurrectione, Justis a Deo conlata; adversus Thomae Burneti Britanni Librum de Statu Mortuorum.” Veronae, 1738, 4to. The name of Burnet appears in the following publication, but his only contribution consists of a few pages translated from his treatise on the faith and duties of Christians: “The Judgment of Dr Thomas Burnet, late Master of the Charter-House, concerning the Doctrine of the Trinity: and the Judgment of Dr Samuel Clarke, late Rector of St James’s, concerning 1. the Satisfaction, 2. the Merits, 3. the Mediation and Intercession of Christ, 4. the ordinary Influence and Assistance of the Holy Spirit, 5. the two Sacraments. With a preface concerning Mr Lock, Sir Isaac Newton, and Mr Wollaston.” Lond. 1732, 8vo. (x.)

Burnet, Gilbert, bishop of Salisbury, was born at Edinburgh in 1643, but was descended of an ancient family in the county of Aberdeen. His father being bred to the law, was, at the restoration of King Charles IL, appointed one of the lords of session, by the title of Lord Crimond, as a reward for his constant attachment to the royal party during the civil wars. Gilbert, the youngest son of his father, was instructed by him in the Latin tongue; and at ten years of age he was sent to Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he was admitted A. Μ. before he was fourteen years of age. His own inclination led him to the study of the civil and feudal law; and he used to say that it was from this study he had received more just notions concerning the foundations of civil society and government, than those which some divines maintain. He afterwards changed his views, and, to the great satisfaction of his father, began to apply to divinity. He received ordination before the age of eighteen; and Sir Alexander Burnet, his cousin-german, offered him a benefice, but he refused to accept of it.

In 1663, about two years after the death of his father, he came into England; and after six months stay at Oxford and Cambridge, returned to Scotland; which he soon left again to make a tour of some months, in 1664, in Holland and France. At Amsterdam, by the help of a Jewish rabbi, he perfected himself in the Hebrew language; and likewise became acquainted with the leading men of the different persuasions tolerated in that country, Calvinists, Arminians, Lutherans, Anabaptists, Brownists, Papists, and Unitarians; among each of which sects he used frequently to declare he met with men of such unfeigned piety and virtue, that he became fixed in a strong principle of universal charity, and an invincible abhorrence of all severities on account of religious dissensions.

Upon his return from his travels, he was admitted minister of Saltoun; in which station he served five years in the most exemplary manner. He drew up a memorial, in which lie took notice of the principal errors in the conduct of the Scotish bishops, which he observed not to be conformable to the primitive institution; and sent a copy of it to several of them. This exposed him to their resentments; but to show he was not actuated by a spirit of ambition, he led a retired course of life for two years, which so endangered his health that he was obliged to abate his excessive application to study. In the year 1668 he was appointed professor of divinity in the university of Glasgow; and, according to the usual practice, he read his lectures in the Latin language. It was apparently at this’ period that he laid the chief foundation of that theological learning for which he became so distinguished. In 1669 lie published his “Modest and free Conference between a Conformist and Nonconformist.” He became acquainted with the Duchess of Hamilton, who communicated to him all the papers belonging to her father and her uncle; upon which he drew up the “Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton,” afterwards printed at London, in folio, in the year 1677. The Duke of Lauderdale, hearing he was engaged in this work, invited him to London, and introduced him to King Charles II. He returned to Scotland, and married Lady Margaret Kennedy, daughter of the Earl of Cassillis, a lady of great knowledge, and highly esteemed by the Presbyterians, to whose sentiments she was strongly inclined.^[2. Some degree of attention has lately been directed to this lady in consequence of the publication of a collection of Letters fa>m Lady Margaret Burnet to John Duke of Lauderdale. Edinb. 1828, 4to. ] As there was some disparity in their ages, that it might be sufficiently evident that this match was wholly owing to inclination, and not to avarice or ambition, the day before their marriage he delivered to the lady a deed, by which he renounced all pretensions to her fortune, which was very considerable, and must otherwise have fallen into his hands, she herself having no intention to secure it. His “Vindication of the Authority, Constitution, and Laws of the Church and State of Scotland,” was printed at Glasgow, in octavo, in the year 1673. This was considered as so material a service to the government, that he was again offered a bishopric, with a promise of the next vacant archbishopric; but he did not accept of it, because he could not approve of the measures of the court, the great vifew of which he perceived to be the advancement of popery. The publication itself was one of those which the author could not afterwards recollect with much satisfaction. ,

His intimacy with the Dukes of Hamilton and Lauderdale procured him frequent messages from the king and the Duke of York, who. had conversations with him in private. But Lauderdale, who was the most unprincipled man of the age, conceiving a resentment against him on account of the freedom with which he spoke to him, represented at last to the king that Dr Burnet was engaged in an opposition to his measures; and on his return to London he perceived that these suggestions had entirely deprive him of the king’s favour, though the Duke of fork treated him with greater civility than ever, and dissuaded him from going to Scotland. He accordingly resigned his professorship[7:5:723] at Glasgow, and settled in London. About this time the living of Cripplegate being vacant, the dean and chapter of St Paul’s (in whose gift it was), hearing of his circumstances, and the hardships which he had undergone, made him an offer of the benefice; but, as he had been informed of their first intention of conferring it on Dr Fowler, he generously declined it. In 1675, at the recommendation of Lord Hollis, whom he had known in France as ambassador at that court, he was by Sir Harbottle Grimstone, master of the rolls, appointed preacher at the Rolls chapel, notwithstanding the opposition of the court; and he was soon afterwards chosen lecturer at St Clement’s, and became one of the most popular preachers in town. The first volume of his History of the Reformation of the Church of England was published in folio in 1681, the second in 1683, and the third in 1715. For this great work he received the thanks of both houses of parliament. Of the first two volumes he published an abridgment in the year 1683.

Dr Burnet about this time happened to be sent for to a woman in sickness, who had been engaged in an amour with the Earl of Rochester. The manner in which he treated her during her illness gave that profligate nobleman a great curiosity for being acquainted with him; and during a whole winter, he spent one evening of the week with Dr Burnet, who discussed with him all those topics upon which sceptics and men of loose morals attack the Christian religion. The happy effects of these conferences occasioned the publication of his account of the life and death of that nobleman. In 1682, when the administration was changed in favour of the Duke of York, being much resorted to by persons of all ranks and parties, in order to avoid returning visits, he built a laboratory, and for above a year pursued a course of chemical experiments. Not lon*g after he refused a living of three hundred pounds a year offered him by the Earl of Essex, on the terms of his not residing there, but in London. When the enquiry concerning the popish plot was on foot, he was frequently sent for and consulted by King Charles with relation to the state of the nation. His majesty offered him the bishopric of Chichester, then vacant, if he would engage in his interests; but he refused to accept it on these terms. He preached at the Rolls till 1684, when he was dismissed by order of the court.

About this period he published various works, among which we must not overlook the following seven. “Some Passages of the Life and Death of John Earl of Rochester.”^[3. t’í Which,” says Dr Johnson, ςζ the critick ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety.” (TJvcÿ of English Poets, vol. i∙ p. 303.) . ∙* l ∏ τ> tλ tλ ] Lond. 1680, 8vo. “The Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale, Kt. sometime Lord Chief Justice of his Majesties Court of Kings Bench.” Lond. 1682, 8vo. “The History of the Rights of Princes in disposing of Ecclesiastical Benefices and Church Lands.” -Loud. 1682, 8vo. “The Life of William Bedell, D. D. Bishop of Kilmore in Ireland.” Lond. 1685, 8vo. “Reflexions on Mr Varillas’s History of the Revolutions that have happened in Europe in matters of Religion, and more particularly on his ninth book, that relates to England.” Amst. 1686, 12mo. “A Defence of the Reflections on the ninth book or the first volum of Mr Varillas’s History of Heresies; being a Reply to his Answer.” Amst. 1687, 12mo. “A Continuation of Reflections on Mr Varillas’s History of Heresies, particularly on that which relates to English Affairs in his third and fourth tomes.” Amst. 1687, 12mo. He bore a very conspicuous part in the controversy which at that time was so ably maintained against the papists; and a complete catalogue of his works would occupy no small space. The following translations deserve to be mentioned in this very brief and inadequate notice. “Utopia, written in Latin by Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England: translated into English.” Lond. 1685, 8vo. “A Relation of the Death of the primitive Persecutors, written originally in Latin by L. C. F. Lactantius: Englished by Gilbert Burnet, D. D. to which he hath made a large preface concerning persecution.” Amst. 1687,12mo.

On King James’s accession to the throne, having obtained leave to quit the kingdom, he first went to Paris, and lived in great retirement, till, contracting an acquaintance with Brigadier Stouppe, a Protestant gentleman in the French service, he made a tour with him into Italy. He met with an agreeable reception at Rome. Pope Innocent XI. hearing of his arrival, sent the captain of the Swiss guards to acquaint him he would give him a private audience in bed, to avoid the ceremony of kissing his holiness’s slipper; but Dr Burnet excused himself as well as he could. Here, with more zeal than prudence, he engaged in some religious disputes; and, on receiving an intimation from Prince Borghese, he found it necessary to withdraw from this stronghold of priestcraft, and pursued his travels through Switzerland and Germany. He afterwards came to Utrecht, with an intention to settle in some of the seven provinces. There he received an invitation from the prince and princess of Orange (to whom their party in England had recommended him) to come to the Hague, and of this invitation he accepted. He was soon acquainted with the secret of their councils, and advised the preparation of a fleet in Holland sufficient to support their designs and encourage their friends. This, and the account of his travels,^[4. Some Letters, containing an Account of what seemed most remarkable in Switzerland, Italy, &c. written by G. Burnet, D. D. to T. H. R. B. Rotterdam, 168G, 8vo. ] in which he endeavoured to blend popery and tyranny together, and represent them as inseparable, with some papers reflecting on the proceedings of England, that came out in single sheets, and were dispersed in several parts of England, of most of which Dr Burnet owned himself the author, alarmed King James, and were the occasion of his writing twice against him to the princess of Orange, and insisting, by his ambassador, on his being forbidden the court; which, after much importunity, was done, though he continued to be trusted and employed as before, the Dutch minister daily consulting him. To put an end to these frequent conferences with the ministers, a prosecution for high treason was commenced against him both in England and Scotland; but receiving the intelligence before it reached the states, he avoided the storm, by petitioning for, and obtaining without any difficulty, a bill of naturalization, in order to his intended marriage with Mary Scott, a Dutch lady of considerable fortune, who, with the advantage of birth, united those of a fine person and understanding.

After his marriage with this lady, being legally under the protection of Holland, when Dr Burnet found King James plainly subverting the constitution, he omitted no •method to support and promote the design which the prince of Orange had formed of delivering Great Britain; and, having accompanied him in quality of chaplain, he was in the year 1689 advanced to the see of Salisbury. He declared for moderate measures with regard to the clergy who scrupled to take the oaths, and many were displeased with him for declaring for the toleration of nonconformists. As my lord of Salisbury, says the Earl of Shaftesbury, “has done more than any man living for the good and [7:5:724]honour of the church of England and the reform’d religion, so he now suffers more than any man from the tonguesand slander of those ungrateful church-men; who may well call themselves by that single term of distinction, having no claim to that of Christianity or Protestant, since they have thrown off all the temper of the former, and all concern or interest with the latter.” The same noble writer has elsewhere mentioned him in the following terms of commendation: “The bishop of Salisbury’s Exposition of the Articles is, no doubt, highly worthy of your study. None can better explain the sense of the church, than one who is the greatest pillar of it since the first founders; one who best explain’d and asserted the reformation its self; was chiefly instrumental in saving it from popery before and at the Revolution; and is now the truest example of laborious, primitive, pious, and learned episcopacy.”^[5. Shaftesbury’s Letters, p. 28, 3Ĵ. ]

His pastoral letter concerning the oaths of allegiance and supremacy to King William and Queen Mary, 1689, happening to touch upon the right of conquest, gave such offence to both houses of parliament, that it was ordered to be burnt by the hands of the common executioner. He soon afterwards published a very valuable work, entitled A Discourse of the Pastoral Cure. Lond. 1692, 4to. In 1698 he lost his wife by the small-pox; and as he was almost immediately after appointed preceptor to the Duke of Gloucester, of whose education he took great care, this employment, and the tender age of his children, induced him the same year to supply her loss by a marriage with Mrs Berkeley, a widow, who was eldest daughter of Sir Richard Blake. In 1699 he published his Exposition of the thirty-nine Articles ; which occasioned a representation against him in the lower house of convocation in the year 1701, but he was vindicated in the upper house. His speech in the House of Lords in 1704 against the bill to prevent occasional conformity, was severely attacked. He formed a scheme for augmenting the small livings; which he pressed forward with such success, that it ended in an act of parliament passed in the second year of Queen Anne, for the augmentation of the livings of the poor clergy. He died in 1715, and was interred in the church of St James, Clerkenwell, where a monument was erected to his memory.

Bishop Burnet’s History of his own Time, consisting of two large volumes in folio, was not published till several years after the author’s death; the first volume appeared in 1724, an I the second in 1734. An account of his life was added by his youngest son Sir Thomas Burnet, one of the judges of the court of common pleas. The history itself was not printed without mutilations; but after an interval of nearly a century, an edition, containing all the passages which had formerly been suppressed, was published under the superintendence of the learned Dr Routh. Oxford, 1823, 6 vols. 8vo. This is a work of great and intrinsic value: it exhibits many curious and interesting delineations of character, and many striking views of the causes and progress of events. The first volume, which relates to the reigns of Charles II. and his brother James, we consider as the more interesting of the two. His materials are not always very carefully digested, and his style is sometimes supposed to be too familiar; but these defects are abundantly compensated by the copiousness of his information, the benevolence of his sentiments, and the earnestness of his manner. The Conclusion displays superior dignity of composition, and cannot be perused without the most favourable impression of the author’s intellectual attainments and moral worth. He uniformly evinces his attachment to the cause of freedom, nor is this the least conspicuous part of his character: the church of England, in its collective capacity, has always been hostile to civil as well as religious liberty; and its annals exhibit very few names which tend to remove the general stigma. Those of Burnet and Hoadley ought never to be forgotten.

Burnet, James, Lord Monhoddo, a senator of the college of justice, was born about the year 1714. He was the son of Mr Burnet of Monboddo in Kincardineshire. After passing through the usual course of school education, he prosecuted his studies at the universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Leyden, with distinguished reputation. He was admitted an advocate in 1737; and on the 12th of February 1767, he was raised to the bench by the title of Lord Monboddo.

A journey to London became a favourite amusement of his periods of vacation from the business of the court; and for a time he made this journey once a year. A carriage, a vehicle that was not in common use among the ancients, he considered as an engine of effeminacy and sloth, which it was disgraceful for a man to make use of in travelling. To be dragged at the tail of a horse, instead of mounting upon his back, seemed, in his eyes, to be a truly ludicrous degradation of the genuine dignity of human nature: in all his journeys, therefore, between Edinburgh and London, he was wont to ride on horseback, with a single servant attending him. He continued this practice, without finding it too fatiguing for his strength, till he was upwards of eighty years of age.

Lord Monboddo is well known to the world as a man of letters. His first publication was The Origin and Progress of Language, in two vols. 8vo, 1773, which were followed by four more volumes, the last being published not long before his death. In this work, intended chiefly to vindicate the honour of Grecian literature, he ascribes the origin of alphabetical writing to the Egyptians; and strenuously maintains that the ourang-outang is a class of the human species, and that his want of speech is merely accidental. He also endeavours to establish the reality of the existence of mermaids, and other fictitious animals. He was induced to undertake another work for the purpose of defending the cause of Grecian philosophy, and published, in five vols. 4to, a work entitled Ancient Metaphysics, which, like the other, is remarkable for a surprising mixture of erudition and genius, with the most absurd whim and conceit.

As a judge his decisions were sound, Upright, and learned, marked with acute discrimination, and free from those paradoxes and partialities which appear in his writings. He attended his judicial duty with indefatigable diligence till within a few days of his death, which happened at his house in Edinburgh on the 26th of May 1799, at the advanced age of eighty-five.