THE HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. BY THE RIGHT REV. GILBERT BURNET, D.D., SOMETIME BISHOP OF SALISBURY. ABRIDGED BY THE AUTHOR FOR THE USE of students. New Edition, with Ellustrations. LONDON: VIRTUE AND CO., 26, IVY LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW. 110. k. 440. PREFACE. BISHOP BURNET'S "History of the Reformation of the Church of England," the first volume of which appeared in 1679, was received with much favour by the public, then in a state of great excitement on the subject of Popery, (as it is at the present moment with regard to the Ritualistic innovations in the Service of the Church, with their tendency to Romanism,) and procured for the author the extraordinary honour of the thanks of both Houses of Parliament. Its appearance had a most salutary effect in checking the spread of Romanism, by the simple narrative it placed before the reader, free from all pedantic display, yet full, clear, and reliable in all its details. The folio form in which it was issued, and the extent to which, in its original shape, it was deemed advisable by the author to carry out his plan, made it scarcely accessible to the general reader, many being debarred by the cost, no less than the want of leisure for the careful perusal of so extensive a work or so important a subject. He himself tells us: "I have been desired by many to contract what I prosecuted more largely in the original work, and bring it into a less compass." "I know," he adds, "abridgments are generally hurtful. In them men receive such a slight tincture of knowledge as only feeds vanity and furnishes discourse, but does not give so clear a view of things nor so solid an instruction as may be had in more copious writings. And as it is a grievous imposition on that time which ought to be employed to better uses, to draw out that which might be expressed in few words to such a length that it frightens some from the study of books which might have been of excellent use if they had not been too voluminous, and oppresses the patience of those who are resolved to acquire knowledge in the most laborious methods; so it is, on the other hand, a great prejudice to the improvement of learning when |