y.

Funeral sermons are not always the naked truth, but Lloyd's fine saying
about Wilkins bears on it the stamp of sincerity: "It was his way of
friendship not so much to oblige men as to do them good."

Burnet adds another testimony to Wilkins' singular power of winning
affection. He writes: "Wilkins was a man of as great a mind, as true a
judgement, as eminent virtues, and of as good a soul, as any one I ever
knew. He was naturally ambitious, but was the wisest clergyman I ever
knew. He was a lover of mankind, and had a delight in doing good."

Burnet was a partisan, but these are the words of more than
partisanship. In his 'History of his Own Time' he introduces Wilkins to
his readers in very distinguished company, among the
Latitudinarians--Whichcote, Cudworth, Tillotson, Lloyd, and
Stillingfleet,--of whom he says that if such men had not appeared, of
another stamp than their predecessors, "the Church had quite lost its
esteem over the nation." Clarendon, whom he calls "more the friend of
the Bishops than of the Church," had, in his opinion, endowed them and
the higher clergy too well, and they were sunk in luxury and sloth. The
Latitudinarians infused into the Church life, energy, and a sense of
duty: they were, he adds, good preachers and acceptable to the king,
who, "having little or no literature, but true and good sense," liked
sermons "plain, clear, and short." "Incedo per ignes," but it is
impossible to refrain from quoting Burnet's language, which, _mutatis
mutandis_, would have expressed what High Churchmen felt towards the
leaders of the Oxford movement, and with equal truth and justice.

Here Antony Wood may be called in to play the part of the Advocatus
Diaboli. He plays it in the following passage, as always, with great
vigour and enjoyment: "Dr John Wilkins, a notorious complyer with the
Presbyterians, from whom he obtained the Wardenship of Wadham; with the
Independants and Cromwell himself, by whose favour he did not only get
a dispensation to marry (contrary to the College Statutes), but also,
because he had married his sister, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge:
from which being ejected at the Restoration, he faced about, and by his
smooth language, insinuating preaching, flatteries, and I know not what,
got among other preferments the Deanery of Ripon, and at length by the
commendation of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, a great favourer of
fanaticks and atheists, the Bishopric of Chester