Gilbert Burnet

"It is certain, That the Law of Nature has put no difference nor subordination among Men, except it be that of Children to Parents, or of Wives to their Husbands; so that with Relation to the Law of Nature, all Men are born free; and this Liberty must still be supposed entire, unless so far as it is limited by Contracts, Provisions, or Laws. For a Man can either bind himself to be a Servant, or sell himself to be a Slave, by which he becomes in the power of another, only so far as it was provided by the Contract: since all that Liberty which was not expresly given away, remains still entire: so that the Plea for Liberty always proves it self, unless it appears that: it is given up or limited by any special Agreement."

"[I]n the management of this Civil Society, great distinction is to be made, between the Power of making Laws for the regulating the Conduct of it, and the Power of executing those Laws: The Supream Authority must still be supposed to be lodged with those who have the Legislative Power reserved to them, but not with those who have only the Executive; which is plainly a Trust, when it is separated from the Legislative Power."

"The measures of Power, and by consequence of Obedience, must be taken from the express Laws of any State or Body of Men, from the Oaths that they swear, or from immemorial Prescription, and a long Possession, which both give a Title, and in a long Tract of Time make a bad one be came good, face Prescription, when it passes the Memory of Man, and is not disputed by any other Pretender, gives by the common Sense of all Men a just and good Title: so upon the whole matter, the degrees of all Civil Authority are to be taken either from express Laws, immemorial Customs, or from particular Oaths, which the Subjects swear to their Princes: this being still to be laid down for a Principle, that in all the Disputes between Power and Liberty, Power must always be proved, but Liberty proves it self; the one being founded only upon a Positive Law, and the other upon the Law of Nature."

"[T]he chief Design of our whole Law, and of all the several Rules of our Constitution, is to secure and maintain our Liberty."

"The chief glory of Princes, and the chief of their Titles...is, That they are God's Deputies and Vicegerents here on earth; that they re­present him, and by consequence, that they ought to resemble him. The outward respect paid them, carries a proportion to that Character of Divinity which is on them, and that supposes an imitation of the Divine Perfections in them."

"[T]he queen spoke to myself [in 1711]... I asked leave to speak my mind plainly; which she granted: I said, any treaty by which Spain and the West Indies were left to king Philip, must in a little while deliver up all Europe into the hands of France; and, if any such peace should be made, she was betrayed, and we were all ruined; in less than three years' time she would be murdered, and the fires would be again raised in Smithfield: I pursued this long, till I saw she grew uneasy; so I withdrew."

"Damn him, he has told a great deal of truth, but where the devil did he learn it?"

"Nor could any be more qualified for writing the History of his own Times, for he was Curious and Inquisitive, and had a large Acquaintance, and the Opportunity of conversing with all sorts of Persons, of all Ranks, from the Throne downwards. He never heard of any Person of Note, whether at home or abroad, whom he did not take some Opportunity of visiting; and if they were not of themselves ready to declare what they knew, he endeavoured to draw them into it by his curious Questions, as I have been informed by those who knew his ways; so that without Question, there were few who could know more, or so much of the Transactions of these Times he writes of."

"Bishop Burnet was a man of the most extensive knowledge I ever met with; had read and seen a great deal, with a prodigious memory, and a very indifferent judgment: he was extremely partial, and readily took every thing for granted that he heard to the prejudice of those that he did not like: which made him pass for a man of less truth than he really was. I do not think he designedly published any thing he believed to be false. He had a boisterous vehement manner of expressing himself, which often made him ridiculous, especially in the house of lords, when what he said would not have been thought so, delivered in a lower voice, and a calmer behaviour. His vast knowledge occasioned his frequent rambling from the point he was speaking to, which ran him into discourses of so universal a nature, that there was no end to be expected but from a failure of his strength and spirits, of both which he had a larger share than most men; which were accompanied with a most invincible assurance."

"Sir J. Jekyl told me, that he was present at this sermon: I think it was this: and that when the author had preached out the hour-glass, he took it up and held it aloft in his hand, and then turned it up for another hour, upon which the audience (a very large one for the place) set up almost a shout for joy. I once heard him preach at the Temple church, on the subject of popery, it was on the fast-day for the negotiations of peace at Utrecht. He set forth all the horrors of that religion with such force of speech and action, (for he had much of that in his preaching at all times,) that I have never seen an audience any where so much affected, as we all were who were present at this discourse. He preached then, as he generally did, without notes. He was in his exterior too the finest figure I ever saw in a pulpit."

"I had admittance to hear one of these lectures. It was upon the new heavens and the new earth after the general conflagration. He first read to us the chapter in St. Peter, where this is described. Then enlarged upon it with that force of imagination and solemnity of speech and manner, (the subject suiting his genius,) as to make this resemblance of it to affect me extremely even now, although it is near forty years ago since I heard it. I remember it the more, because I never heard a preacher equal to him. There was an earnestness of heart, and look, and voice, that is scarcely to be conceived, as it is not the fashion of the present times; and by the want of which, as much as any thing, religion is every day failing with us."

"Burnet I like much. It is observable, that none of his facts has been controverted, except his relation of the birth of the pretender, in which he was certainly mistaken—but his very credulity is a proof of his honesty. Burnet's style and manner are very interesting. It seems as if he had just come from the king's closet, or from the apartments of the men whom he describes, and was telling his reader, in plain honest terms, what he had seen and heard."

"The merits and faults of Burnet's most familiar book are the merits and faults of the man himself. It is vivid, energetic, and picturesque. It is never dull, and it is never tired. It carries the reader along its stream of words with as little resistance as Burnet's audience opposed to his sermons. And the ease of its style is matched by an ease of fancy. Burnet was a gossip in an age of gossips. He had the same curiosity, the same love of the trivial, as obsessed Aubrey and Anthony à Wood. He did not disdain to record the tricks of manner and speech which differentiate one man from another, and which graver historians omit. For instance, he tells us that Lauderdale's "tongue was too big for his mouth, which made him bedew all he talked to"; that Shaftesbury "depended much on what a drunken physician had predicted"; that Orrery "pretended to wit, but it was very luscious"; that Buckingham "has no manner of literature, and all he knows is in chemistry." So much may be set down to his credit. On the other hand, his book is, like himself, garrulous, reckless, and undisciplined. He still preaches to the personages of his History as he preached to them, if he might, when he and they were alive. Withal he was a finished eavesdropper, who combined the keen scent for news with the tireless indiscretion of the modern reporter; and it may be said that there is no side of his own various character that is not illustrated in the History of My Own Time."

"He has given us such a gallery of portraits as you will not find outside the pages of Clarendon. He was not so fine a painter as his great rival, whose scrupulous tact in the selection of virtues and vices was beyond his reach. He was familiar, where Clarendon was austere, happily trivial and even witty, where Clarendon was pompous or priggish. He obtained his results not by choice and omission, but by a careless profusion of detail, and despite his lack of artistry, despite his prejudice, he bears indispensable witness to one of the most interesting periods of our history."