[Footnote 25: Bishop Burnet had already been married three times. [T.
S.]]

But as to the Tory laity; he gives them up in a lump for abandoned
atheists: They are a set of men so "impiously corrupted in the point of
religion, that no scene of cruelty can fright them from leaping into it
[Popery] and perhaps acting such a part in it, as may be assigned
them."[26] He therefore despairs of influencing them by any topics drawn
from religion or compassion, and advances the consideration of interest,
as the only powerful argument to persuade them against Popery.

[Footnote 26: Page 37.]

What he offers upon this head is so very amazing from a Christian, a
clergyman, and a prelate of the Church of England, that I must in my own
imagination strip him of those three capacities, and put him among the
number of that set of men he mentions in the paragraph before; or else
it will be impossible to shape out an answer.

His Lordship, in order to dissuade the Tories from their design of
bringing in Popery, tells them, "how valuable a part of the whole soil
of England, the abbey lands, the estates of the bishops, of the
cathedrals, and the tithes are;"[27] how difficult such "a resumption
would be to many families; yet all these must be thrown up; for
sacrilege in the church of Rome, is a mortal sin." I desire it may be
observed, what a jumble here is made of ecclesiastical revenues, as if
they were all upon the same foot, were alienated with equal justice, and
the clergy had no more reason to complain of the one than the other.
Whereas the four branches mentioned by him are of very different