the
authority of the King and Parliament of England to bind the
kingdom and people of Ireland," an address was presented to the
King praying him to punish the author of such "bold and
pernicious assertions," and to discourage all things that might
lessen the dependence of Ireland upon England; to which William
replied that he would take care that what they complained of
should be prevented and redressed. Perhaps the dedication of the
book to the King restrained the House from voting it to the
flames; but, anyhow, there is not the least contemporary evidence
of their doing so. Molyneux did not survive the year of the
condemnation of his book; but, in spite of his fears, he spent
five weeks with Locke at Oates in the autumn of the same year,
his book surviving him, to attest his wonderful foresight as much
as later events justified his spirited remonstrance.

There is, however, no doubt about the burning of a book for its
theological sentiments at this time, though it was no Parliament
but only an university which committed it to the fire. Oxford
University has always tempered her love for learning with a
dislike for inquiry, and set the cause of orthodoxy above the
cause of truth. This phase of her character was never better
illustrated than in the case of _The Naked Gospel_, by the Rev.
Arthur Bury, Rector of Exeter College (1690).

A high value attaches to the first edition of this book, wherein
the author essayed to show what the primitive Gospel really was,
what alterations had been gradually made in it, and what
advantages and disadvantages had therefrom ensued. Bury, many
years before, in 1648, had known what it was to be led from his
college by a file of musketeers, and forbidden to return to
Oxford or his fellowship under pain of death, because he had the
courage in those days to read the prayers of the Church. So he
had some justification for ascribing his anonymous work to "a
true son of the Church"; and his motive was the promotion of that
charity and toleration which breathes in its every page. The King
had summoned a Convocation, to make certain changes in the
Litany, and, if possible, to reconcile ecclesiastical
differences; he even dreamt of uniting the Protestant Churches of
England and of the Continent, and his Comprehension Bill, had it
passed Parliament, might have made the English Church a really
national Church; and it was from his sympathy with the broad
ideas of the King that Bury wrote his p