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AN 
 
 ESS AT 
 
 ON 
 
 WARBURTON'S 
 
 DIVINE 
 
 LEGATION. 
 
 A FELLOWSHIP 
 
 PROBATIONARY EXERCISE 
 
 I 
 
 HEREFORD, 
 PRINTED BY E. G. WRIGHT, JOURNAL OFFICE, 
 
 1828. 
 
 Co 
 

ESSAY 
 
 ON 
 
 Wterhurton's Divine Legation, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Religious Controversy in general; — its causes and effects. 
 
 THE connection between the moral and the physical world, 
 the constitution of the universe within us, our reason, passions, 
 and affections, and that of the material system without us and 
 around us, their identity of design, and the marks they bear of 
 the same divine origin, is a most fertile and interesting subject 
 of inquiry. Here it will be enough to touch slightly on one 
 only of the many points of resemblance observable in their 
 bearing on our own minds and feelings, the only relation which 
 is valuable to the practical student of either. Truth of all 
 kinds, physical and moral, is liable to the same impediments, 
 the same passions to oppose, the same prejudices to thwart it; 
 the same inveterate principle of slothfulness, the strongest per- 
 haps in our whole nature, to prevent its practical usefulness, 
 even when its evidence is too strong for the passive under- 
 standing to resist. The only difference between the two cases 
 is, that the obstacles in the way of moral truth act with a ten- 
 fold energy. On the one hand our mind only and (if we may 
 so say) our intellectual passions are in arms, on the other 
 the whole powers of our nature ! On the one hand are 
 
faculties that end in theory, or which, if they end not there, 
 have few occasions for action, on the other are those moral 
 sentiments which, good or bad, are the absolute disposers of 
 our lives, and the great and efficient actors in that stage whereon 
 every man must play his part. The prominent facts indeed 
 in both cases seem too obvious to escape the most careless and 
 indifferent observer, and too full of meaning to deceive the 
 most superficial reasoner. Yet even these are rather forced 
 upon us than collected by us, and drift loosely and carelessly 
 down the current of the mind, along with that heterogeneous 
 and chaotic mass of feeling, passion, and opinion which consti- 
 tutes the substance of that intellectual nature which, though 
 forced by its framer to think in some way or other, enjoys an 
 unlimited charter to distinguish, infer, and systematize as its 
 own judgment or caprice may direct. If such be the state 
 with the facts of the case, the first simple elements of our 
 knowledge and belief, much more must the same difficulties 
 extend themselves to all attempts towards attaining that form 
 of theory and philosophy which can alone consolidate and 
 harmonize the whole. To pass over the history of those laws 
 of the material world which (revealed at length by the inspi- 
 ration of stupendous genius) have been disbelieved by one half 
 of the generations of men from the same prejudice through 
 which they will be believed by the other, to pass over the 
 annals of natural religion, let us at once proceed to the Chris- 
 tian dispensation. In that awful repository of divine truth are 
 opened to us the mysteries of our wonderful nature — the end 
 of our being — the hopes and fears of our immortal mind — the 
 sphere originally traced out for it — the causes that have driven 
 it from its orbit, and the means devised by Infinite Wisdom to 
 controul its eccentricities, and to reconcile its wayward and 
 jarring motions to himself, the centre and end of all things. 
 Executed in time, yet conceived in the past and extended into 
 the coming eternity, it claims an integral part in the transac- 
 tions of the universe, from the moment that prophecy first 
 unclosed her lips to fallen man to its consummation, in blood, 
 on Calvary, from the infant Church of Palestine to that which 
 
shall at length embrace all nations and tongues in its circum- 
 ference, its records swallow up in their wide and various rela- 
 tions, the history of the world. But we need not cast our eyes 
 on these sublime features of Christianity, we need not contem- 
 plate it in this the greatness of its stature, in which its hundred 
 arms extend its influence over the general concerns of mankind, 
 to enable us to discover how inseparably are its records inter- 
 twined with the physical and moral history of the human race. 
 Inseparably indeed, and to its corruption, has it been so con- 
 nected, and, but for the protecting shield which Omnipotence 
 has thrown over its frailty to its utter annihilation ! If we 
 turn, but for a moment, from those scriptures of truth in 
 which its features are mirrored, the change which its lineaments 
 receive, discoloured, distorted, transmuted into every deformity 
 of error, betrays, but too well, the misty and tainted atmos- 
 phere through which its pure and holy light is refracted to us. 
 Heaven-born and heaven-descended it seems the monstrous 
 progeny of earth and hell, commissioned to guide and to control 
 the natural passions, it becomes the minister and satellite of its 
 own subjects ; and even when it has not utterly lost its origi- 
 nal qualities, it has been so fused and melted into the general 
 mass of human passions, feelings, and infirmities, that the 
 strictest analysis can scarcely detect its presence in so discordant 
 an assemblage. But, without overcharging the picture or 
 sacrificing correctness to effect, it is a certain but melancholy 
 truth, that even in the fairest seasons of the church, when no 
 persecution has menaced its supremacy from without, or even 
 heresy reared its head from within her pale, a pestilent spirit of 
 dissention has been at work among her professors, and her 
 champions, without any foreign foe to combat withal, have 
 waged an inglorious warfare against themselves. This is 
 perhaps the inevitable destiny of human infirmities, and the 
 religious, like the natural atmosphere, craves the terrible aid of 
 storms and tornadoes to agitate its stagnation into active 
 healthfulness ! Yet, while we adore the mysterious law, which, 
 by reconciling contrarieties, brings good out of evil, the un- 
 chastened passions, and unchristian feelings which too often 
 
call it into action ought, not the less, to be visited with the 
 severest malediction. Eighteen centuries have rolled away, 
 and have witnessed the birth, the triumph, the corruption, and 
 regeneration of Christianity — they have seen her crowned with 
 thorns, and nailed to the cross — they have seen her, in her 
 usurpation, lay her insulting foot on the necks of kings and of 
 conquerors — they have seen her in her own pure and holy 
 form, the associate, not the tyrant of civil government, exercise 
 her legitimate empire over the fate of mankind, blessing and 
 blest — yet they have still witnessed the Church the arena of 
 gladiatorial combats, her name the whetstone of polemic wit, 
 and her sacred archives the exhaustless armoury of theological 
 war. Few transactions perhaps offer to an acute and reflect- 
 ing observer, a lesson more pregnant with instruction than the 
 annals of religious dispute, and in the developement of its 
 causes, appearances, and effects, a master-hand might trace, in 
 full and striking relief for the instruction and wonder of men, 
 the map of the human mind. Gigantic talents unequally 
 coping with malignant jealousy or presumptuous ignorance, 
 honest zeal stung into the acrimony of personal feeling, and 
 personal feeling masquing in the dress of zeal, genius spinning 
 its bullion into threads of sophistry, and learned dullness 
 fencing its feeble vision against the brightness of truth by dis- 
 turbing the dust of antiquity, the fiery ebullitions of unde- 
 signing enthusiasm, and the poison distilled by the alembic of 
 cold-hearted philosophy, these and more than these, varied 
 into every fantastic shape, and grouped into every imaginable 
 combination, have been pressed into the service of controver- 
 sial strife ! Yet, whilst all parties are in other respects diame- 
 trically opposed, where opposition matters not ; in one where 
 their agreement is fatal, they are in most cases too intimately 
 leagued. Whilst each boasts the public good, as his motive, 
 each emblazons truth as his banner and recognizance, and 
 hurls forth her name as his watch-word and cry of battle, the 
 passions of the man are gratified, the interests of the party 
 furthered, their respective heroes caressed and crowned, whilst 
 the question at issue remains where it was, truth is blasphemed, 
 
and religion, to which she is the handmaid, sees in the victories 
 and trophies of this civil discord, nothing but the signs of her 
 own decay, and the monuments of her own ruin ! — Religious 
 disputes indeed are attended by one disadvantage to which no 
 other controversy can be ever liable. Controversies are 
 assuredly in all cases to be deprecated, and are then only 
 advantageous, or even innocent, when conducted with that 
 calmness, temper and moderation, which can alone extract their 
 sting, and refine them from those drops of cavil and disputa- 
 tion, which are no less fatal to the interests of true science, than 
 of true religion. Their influence extends beyond themselves, 
 the infinite relations, which identify every individual with the 
 society to which he belongs, exert their accustomed power, and 
 they go far, very far, to untune that harmony, and to affect that 
 spirit of unity, from which the happiness and comfort of every 
 society whatever, must, in the end, emanate. Here, however, 
 the evil, in ordinary cases, checks itself, and, whatever be 
 the mischief which society in general suffers, the dishonour is 
 confined to the individuals, who have thrown the brands of 
 discord about them to disturb its repose. But, in the case 
 of religion, the evil is more multiplied, and the poison is more 
 widely diffused. Society, in the general sense of the term, has 
 nothing external to itself; it is, as it were, self-existent and 
 self-contained, and its good and evil must flow from its own 
 bosom ! Religion, after all, is confined but to a smaller, within 
 a larger community, and receives many an external jar, direc- 
 tion, and impulse — its nature is to extend its influence, and to 
 leaven the surrounding mass with its own spirit — it hangs, there- 
 fore, much on the opinions of those, who are beyond it, and 
 that opinion will hinge materially on the temper, that seems to 
 animate its constitution. That, therefore which in the one 
 case, is a fault, in the other, becomes a sin — that which in the 
 one is the infringement of a decency, is in the other the aban- 
 donment of a principle, — that which only affects a grace and 
 ornament of the one, goes near to annihilate the very life and 
 essence of the other. But, in order to counteract this tendency, 
 it is happily ordered, that the records of our religion present 
 
at least as much purely intellectual materials for the under- 
 standing, as moral themes and subjects to the feelings. Those 
 very fundamental doctrines, which lie within the grasp of 
 ordinary comprehension, and are open for the acceptance, 
 through humble faith, of the lowest among the sons of men, yet 
 afford, in the establishment of their evidence, and the contem- 
 plation of their profound mysteries, an ample field for the 
 most unbounded intellect. For those restless minds again, 
 which disdain the broad and ample stream of truth, as too 
 confined for their ambition, each of those thousand currents 
 which feed it, and trace their course into more wild and distant 
 regions, is ever tempting and rewarding the enterprize of 
 adventurers ; whilst, for still more subtil and ardent spirits, the 
 infinite space of religious metaphysics unfolds its boundless 
 but perilous abyss to the flight of the boldest wing. Each, in 
 his own sphere, may be useful to the cause of truth; each lays 
 up his treasure in her store-house ; and all, in their several 
 degrees, merit the gratitude of the cause they serve. — 
 This advantage, at least, accrues, — that the superabundant 
 and fermenting strength of intellect, which might not have 
 brooked what it would deem the trammels of a mere moral 
 system, is sent out as it were, into distant colonies, and 
 expended in enterprizes, which, if they succeed, add fresh 
 glory to the cause, and, if they fail, still leave its intrinsic 
 vigor fresh and unimpaired, its real evidences still quick with 
 the vitality of truth, and the rock on which it reposes, though 
 shorn of a few superfluous and fantastic pinnacles, with its 
 everlasting foundations cast as deep and firm as ever ! This, 
 while it multiplies the subjects of contention, in multiplying 
 them makes them less important, makes them as much philo- 
 sophical, as religious disputations, and, diverting them into col- 
 lateral inquiries, lessens the danger, to which Christian truth is 
 itself exposed. The sight of a Controversialist has a strangely 
 magnifying power; and, but for the use of this mental micros- 
 cope, it would be difficult to account for the disproportioned 
 growth, into which many a fiercely disputed trifle has been 
 suddenly exalted — so much so, that there is nothing perhaps 
 
in religion which, if we regard it, not in its absolute, but re- 
 lative and possible importance ; which, if we look, not to its 
 value in the eye of cool reason, but to the influence its dex- 
 trous use may hold on the passions of mankind, can be, with 
 propriety, denominated a trifle. Scarcely any fact or opinion 
 has an isolated existence; and in the vast circle of the intellec- 
 tual world, orb is enclosed within orb, coil rolled up within 
 coil in the mighty chain, which, though infinitely subdivided, 
 and multiplied into a thousand parts, which have no apparent 
 connection with each other, is linked by subtle and invisible 
 rivets into one stupendous whole. As this will, in a greater or 
 less degree, apply to all cases, it will be no longer a matter of 
 wonder, that many an inconsiderable proposition should be 
 made to sustain the weight of all its kindred truths, and that 
 perverse ingenuity should trace the genealogy of many an in- 
 different hypothesis to a relationship, intimate and indissolu- 
 ble, with the most awful verities, and concentrate the whole 
 strength of themselves and their cause on a desolate and de- 
 bateable spot, which, like some little island, that is made at 
 once the arena and prize of two mighty Monarchies, seems to 
 ask with amazement, whence comes the interest, which turns 
 all eyes towards it, and whence the gorgeous array, that mus- 
 ters on its barrenness ! A general principle, imperfectly un- 
 derstood, or maliciously applied, pushed beyond its legitimate 
 limits, or ( assaulted only in its exceptions, — an assertion inad- 
 vertently hazarded, fiercely assailed, and indignantly and fu- 
 riously supported, with good intentions perhaps on both sides, 
 but with candour and openness on neither, may be deemed a 
 compendium and fair epitome of but too many of the controver- 
 sies, which have convulsed the modern Church. Accordingly, 
 when the lapse of time has hushed the tumult of the contest, 
 when the question, like a human body unnaturally excited, 
 has sunk into a decrepitude as premature as its vigor, — when 
 we venture to snatch it from beneath the shadow of the great 
 names, which have sheltered its pigmy growth, and with blood 
 that has ceased to boil, and ears to tingle, and eyes to be daz- 
 zled, feel and touch and handle it, we gaze on the shrivelled 
 
8 
 
 phantom, which is all that remains to reward our inquiring 
 search, with wonder, disappointment, and disgust! But 
 there is one cause of controversy of influence so wide, so par- 
 donable, and so natural, that, in this sketch, brief as it is, it 
 were scarcely excusable to omit it, or even, to a certain extent, 
 to investigate its philosophy — the dread of what is new, or seems 
 so, and attachment to what is old. These feelings, indeed, all 
 inactive and negative as they seem, probably play a much more 
 distinguished part than is generally imagined, in that alternate 
 advancement and retardation of things, political, moral, and 
 religious, which is intended to adjust them for their final con- 
 summation — We are so formed, as individuals, as to be capa- 
 ble of exercising free-will, and to be thereby entitled to the 
 character of moral agents, and to befitting punishment and 
 reward. Yet, by the arbitrary structure of the whole, and 
 the necessary operation of certain passions and instincts in an 
 appointed direction, it comes to pass, that without any delibe- 
 rate aim of the agents, nay, against every effort of individuals 
 to thwart it by the perverse and countless eccentricities of pre- 
 dominant self-love, the world is conducted in the path traced 
 out by its framer, its revolutions made to converge to one end, 
 and his unthinking creatures, as a whole, invisibly, but im- 
 mediately and irresistibly controuled by his omnipotence and 
 wisdom ! Out of all this mechanism, this exquisite calcula- 
 tion of forces, this arrangement of infinite wheels, this appa- 
 rent discord but resulting harmony, we need only, for our pre- 
 sent purpose, mark the antagonist powers of the passion for 
 novelty and the prejudice for existing things. Linked toge- 
 ther, as twins, yet ever struggling with each other, as ene- 
 mies, — the one the main-spring, the other the regulator of all 
 knowledge and improvement, — the one, the gage for the disco- 
 very and acceptance of all that is useful, the other the earnest 
 of its stability, their conflicting elements settle into equilibrium. 
 The very excess, the very extremes in which they are usually 
 displayed, acting as opposite poisons, neutralize each other ; 
 and the mad lust for novelty, the source of all political and 
 religious revolution, is amply counterbalanced by the bigotry, 
 
the imbecility, and very dotage of the mind, which confers an 
 apotheosis on the errors, and an unmerited immortality on the 
 follies of former ages. In the first centuries of the Church, 
 before time had hallowed its doctrines, authorities settled its 
 land-marks, or long discipline broken in the minds of its 
 disciples to the wholesome restraints of an establishment, 
 the frightful heresies, that stalked abroad to its destruction, 
 seem rather the dreams of impure delirium, than the inter- 
 pretations of reasonable men. Theirs were the errors of an 
 unbridled and licentious imagination, the excitement of no- 
 velty, the froth and fumes of excessive agitation. Later 
 ages, on the contrary, overwhelmed with authorities, and 
 stagnating in precedent, have rued the plagues, that have 
 exhaled from the marshes of quiescent Christianity. The in- 
 fluence of age, powerful in all things, and insensibly exerting 
 its energy even on the boldest innovators, is omnipotent in 
 religion ; instinct, reason, and imagination bind it with a triple 
 cord upon us ; and the earliest feelings of our own minds, as 
 well as those of the great world itself, are consecrated to it. 
 We look, with mingled love and awe, on the dim and mighty 
 fabric ; we adore in it the venerableness, not the infirmity of 
 years, the majesty, not the deformity of collected ages. But 
 we mar the symmetry of the temple by fanciful additions of 
 our own ; we build beneath its columns the mean huts of our 
 own imaginations ; and then view, with indiscriminating horror, 
 the least assault on that which, in our association, has ever 
 been holy ; and deem it sacrilege to move though but the 
 smallest stone, from a structure where all things alike are con- 
 secrated to our eyes by the moss and lichens of antiquity ! 
 
 This feeling, connected as it is with the best affections of 
 our nature, and always, perhaps, respectable, is yet so apt 
 to degenerate into a bigotry, which would fain strangle 
 all freedom of thought in its cradle, that it can scarcely 
 be watched with too jealous an eye. Truth, moreover, is ever 
 the same, and depends not on time; it challenges the under- 
 standing, and does not circumvent the affections ; it is the tried 
 staple of reason, and not the current coin of authority ; and 
 
10 
 
 every now and then, bold and independent spirits will arise, 
 who assert their birthright of freedom, and, unrelentingly 
 submitting the precious metal to the crucible and the fire, 
 expel into airy fumes many a tainting mixture, and adulterat- 
 ing dross. Nor must we forget a very important distinction 
 between divinity and theology. Divinity is the knowlege of 
 what the holy scriptures have made essential to our conduct here, 
 and our hopes of immortality hereafter; and admits not, there- 
 fore, of that range for inventive intellect and advancing truth, 
 on which we have dwelt so long. But theology comprehends, 
 under its empire, all truths whatever, which just inference may 
 elicit from holy writ, and is really liable to the operation of all 
 the causes, which, either to advance or retard their progress, 
 other sciences have experienced. It has undergone the same 
 revolutions, the same changes, the same alternate resurrection 
 of once established truth, and once exploded error; and, though 
 very much has been done to settle its laws, and define its 
 limits, yet the field is far from cleared, and a rich and abun- 
 dant harvest is still behind. It is an interesting, in truth, and 
 an instructive speculation, to trace the steps, by which religion 
 has been advanced into that present state of purity and pri- 
 mitive excellence, which our own country numbers among its 
 best titles of greatness and glory. Long was it before she was 
 divorced from that monstrous wedlock, in which Paganizing 
 Christians, and Christianizing Pagans, had linked her with the 
 dreaming madness, on whose forehead the ignorance of an- 
 tient and the courtesy of modern times have written the name 
 of philosophy ; long was it before she was rescued from the 
 dungeon, into which scholastic metaphysics had thrown her, 
 and where, like the strength of Samson making sport for the 
 revellers of Gaza, the ambassadress of heaven was compelled 
 to write theses for schoolmen, and the oracle of truth to bab- 
 ble the unintelligible jargon of Aristotle and Aquinas. She 
 has been rescued from the pompous burthen of Roman Catho- 
 lic superstition, and she has abdicated the throne, from which 
 she was forced to fulminate her decrees against that science and 
 philosophy, which bigotry first branded as her enemies, and 
 
11 
 
 then bound hand and foot as fitting hecatombs for her revenge ! 
 The proper sphere for religious investigation is now marked 
 out, its records freed from extraneous matter, the laws of in- 
 terpretation more clearly ascertained, its principles better elu- 
 cidated, and the rubbish of pedantry, that once encumbered 
 its surface, in a great measure, removed. Yet many truths 
 still remain unascertained; many points are yet open to debate; 
 and it must not be forgotten, that all our vantage ground has 
 been gained, step by step, in defiance of prejudice, in opposi- 
 tion to established opinion ; and that bold and original intellect, 
 left to the exercise of its own powers, and free to submit all 
 it examined to the test of reason, has been the instrument, by 
 which so many advantages have been gained, and so many 
 triumphs achieved. Yet, in inveterate defiance of all this, 
 many an opinion is laughed to scorn, not because we have found 
 it untrue, but because we prejudge it false, — not because reason 
 rejects it, but because other times have not held it^ — or because 
 the discovery is due to another and not to ourselves, — or be- 
 cause we cherish that perversion of mind, which, jealous of 
 its own opinions, feels it a degredation to assent even to truth, 
 without a struggle, and seeks to prove to the world its inde- 
 pendence of thought, by an obstinate defence of error. And 
 lastly, there is another motive, which over some minds exerts 
 no inconsiderable influence, and brings into the field many a 
 competitor for controversial laurels, who had otherwise slept, 
 in literary obscurity, indeed, but in undespised, because un- 
 known imbecility ! There is a craving, not for fame, but for 
 notoriety, — a petty restlessness of spirit, mistaken for the energy 
 of genius, but, in truth, the ricketiness of an infirm under- 
 standing, — with enough of reason to detect a fault, with enough 
 of accuracy to spy out, microscopically, the flaws, and crevices, 
 and unevenness, in a work of genius, but with a soul incapa- 
 ble to feel its magnificence of execution, to estimate its sub- 
 limity of design, or even to comprehend, within its scanty 
 horizon, more than a segment of its vastness ! There is, more- 
 over, such a thing as Quixotism in controversy, a knight-er- 
 
12 
 
 rantry in theology, which sallies forth, with spear and shield, 
 in search of adventures, in which to signalize its valour; finds 
 or makes the castles, giants, and monsters, for which its ima- 
 gination pants ; and tilts with all it meets, till, chastised into 
 reason by some stronger hand, it returns, like the Knight of 
 La Mancha, with broken armour and shattered limbs, with 
 no comfort but that of good intentions, no guerdon but con- 
 temptuous pity, to rue, in tears and solitude, the effects of its 
 gratuitous extravagance ! 
 
13 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Infidel Objections — difficulty in encountering them — internal and 
 external evidence. 
 
 AN uninterested observer, unacquainted with the facts of 
 the case, might be nearly justified in supposing, that, while 
 so much strength was wasted within, all was peace and safety 
 without, and that while so much pains were expended on the 
 arrangement of its minutest and most inconsiderable parts, 
 and so much importance set on the smallest of them, the great 
 proportions of the Christian structure were settled beyond 
 dispute, and its bulwarks manned and fortified beyond the 
 danger of assault ! But from the first establishment of Chris- 
 tianity up to the present moment, there have been but few pe- 
 riods in which it has really had time for civil dissentions, and 
 its watchful enemies have still contested its first principles, 
 and almost reduced it to the anomalous necessity of proving its 
 own existence. The terrors of temporal power, and the perse- 
 cution of the sword, which barred its earlier progress, have 
 not exhibited a more inveterate spirit of hostility than its later 
 enemies who, from necessity rather than choice, have exchang- 
 ed temporal weapons for the instruments of reason and argu- 
 ment. The soft scepticism that scarce insinuates its doubt, 
 the blasphemy that uplifts its unblushing front to Heaven, the 
 far-drawn argument almost too subtle for the brain of the phi- 
 losopher, the appeal that fires the passions of the multitude, 
 the reasoner and the wit, the polished sarcasm and the rude 
 philippic, splendid eloquence and contemptible ribaldry, minds 
 of all tempers, from the wily sophist to the hot declaimer, and 
 intellects of all calibres, from the genius whose very aberra- 
 tions attest his strength of wing, to the drudge who plies his 
 impure ministry among the very offals of impiety, those who 
 sap and those who storm have all industriously wrought against 
 the cause of Christianity. Nay, Atheism has kindled its tor- 
 
14 
 
 pid, cold,, and passionless carcase into a portentous animation, 
 that which teaches nothing has caught the zeal of a religious 
 sect, the less than sceptic has become the more than bigot, 
 and has sought to enthrone its desolate negation, its dumb and 
 sightless abomination between the cherubim of the Most High ! 
 But the spirit of Christianity has, notwithstanding, not been 
 tamed by years, the emergency of the occasion has created the 
 energies to meet it, the trumpet of the challenger has met with 
 its defiance, and each succeeding generation has raised up a 
 triumphant champion for itself! What was weak, has been 
 strengthened; what was untenable, abandoned; what was 
 doubtful made certain ; the threatened shame of the Church 
 has proved its undisputed honor; and even on the score of ge- 
 nius, long the boast of infidelity, the miracles of reason, the 
 most godlike minds which the world has seen have been proud 
 to rank among the humblest and most dutiful of her sons. 
 Yet the evidences of Christianity, full and ample as they are, 
 bear on them the undeniable stamp of a moral trial ; the same 
 economical sufficiency of means, adapted to the two-fold pur- 
 pose of satisfying the unbiassed reason, and leaving the will 
 unforced, which runs throughout the whole of God's dispen- 
 sations. It was well said by Pascal, that we must have faith 
 before we can believe, and it is certain that a moral and pre- 
 disposed state of the understanding, (a state in many minds 
 most difficult of attainment,) is absolutely necessary for the 
 proper consideration of the Christian evidences. So strong is 
 the corrupted bias of our nature in the other direction, that we 
 must desire that it may be true, before we can prove to our- 
 selves that it is so ; we must take our shoes from off our feet, 
 and feel that the ground whereon we stand is holy ground, 
 before the Divine Presence will deign to convince our under- 
 standing, or to move our heart ; it is not any one circumstance 
 taken separately, but all circumstances collectively, it is not one 
 fact by itself, but a thousand facts in connection, it is the 
 piling of truth on truth, the vast accumulation of distinct evi- 
 dences, heterogeneous, yet forming one consistence, flowing 
 from different quarters, yet converging to one point, mingling, 
 
15 
 
 crossing, strengthening each other, which combine into a body 
 of moral proof, beneath the resistless weight of which all ob- 
 jection and opposition sink into nothingness. Whether it arise 
 from original nature, it matters not, but the fact is certain that, 
 as different minds are influenced to action by different motives, 
 so are they drawn to conviction by different kinds of evidence. 
 Admirable then we must confess to be that variety of proof, in 
 which are united, miracles and prophecy, the dazzling bright- 
 ness of external witness, the soft persuasiveness of internal pu- 
 rity, arguments to convince the intellect, hopes and fears to 
 move the heart, the fulfilment of all the auguries of the imagi- 
 nation, the satisfying of all the instinctive longings of our be- 
 ing, all lifting up their voices, and, as it were, besieging our 
 conviction, and scarcely leaving the wildest idiosyncrasy of 
 mind without its appropriate testimony. Any one who is at 
 all conversant with the history of infidelity, or who has had 
 any occasion to reason with sceptics, must be aware that, when 
 the loose and indefinite objections on which they rest can be 
 reduced into a tangible shape, they arise either from a priori 
 reasonings against a Revelation at all, or at least such a Reve- 
 lation as Christianity claims to be, or from the difficulty of re- 
 conciling to their notions of natural reason particular state- 
 ments, whether facts or doctrines, contained in the records 
 themselves. The first appeal, in most cases, to the majesty of 
 God; the other, to the dignity of man — the one would make 
 God too great to condescend to his creatures, the other his 
 creatures too wise to submit their reason to God — the one, by 
 denying the thing, exclude all evidence whatever — the other 
 arraign the internal, and examine not the external evidence — 
 the one boldly consistent — the other inconsistently bold. Both 
 are impious, but one is illogical ! On the one hand, the at- 
 tributes are cross-examined, if they accord not with the system 
 of the questioner, and, as it were, convicted of perjury, their 
 testimony excluded, and a new God, after their own hearts, 
 created for the occasion ! On the other, the proper order of 
 reasoning is reversed, and internal difficulties are held as de- 
 cisive against the system, which, were they multiplied a 
 
16 
 
 thousand-fold, would be absolutely nugatory as objections, so 
 long as the external evidences remain whole and incontrovertible. 
 The universal feelings and sentiments of mankind, however, 
 in all ages and in all countries, are decisive in favour of the 
 antecedent probability and credibility of a Revelation, as far 
 as the mass of the human race are concerned ; and to the in- 
 ductive reasoner on the government of the world, and the laws 
 by which the divine administration is guided, the consummate 
 harmony between natural and revealed religion, and the per- 
 fect unity of design between the one system, which all allow 
 to be from God, and the other, which likewise claims to be 
 from him, as drawn out in the immortal work of Butler, afford 
 a mass of irresistible evidence. We rise from the perusal of 
 that wonderful effort of intellect not only with our antecedent 
 prejudices banished, our a priori difficulties removed, and our 
 paths made clear before us, but with such an impression of the 
 reasonableness of Christianity, and its unison with our daily 
 experience in the divine arrangement of things, that our unas- 
 sisted reason seems almost capable of having anticipated the 
 schemes of Providence, and able to have expanded the embryo 
 system into the ample lineaments, and matured proportions of 
 Revealed Truth! The observations of Pascal on the same sub- 
 ject, are stamped with the same sublimity of conception and 
 vividness of representation, which marks all that has come 
 from the pen of that great genius, seem like Revelation illus- 
 trating Revelation, and almost justify the remark of his modern 
 eulogist, " that Providence cut him off, before his design was 
 completed, lest the mysteries of Christianity should be render- 
 ed too clear, for the moral probation of the intellect." The 
 external evidences are those which, in the earlier ages of the 
 Church, would in the nature of things, most excite attention, 
 when the arm of Omnipotence was visibly stretched out to con- 
 troul the course of nature, and afford such a manifestation of the 
 divine original of the doctrine which it was intended to sup- 
 port, as to throw into the shade all evidences of a less obtru- 
 sive character. And even in every later period the direct and 
 resistless force with which they prove the point at issue, and 
 
17 
 
 the superior facilities with which such a mode of proof is pro- 
 secuted, would throw a decided preponderance into their 
 scale — not that the one is in reality, more conclusive than the 
 other ; but we are more impressed by facts than doctrines, by 
 the exhibition of power that strikes us, than by the display of 
 wisdom, which our own efforts must enable us to penetrate. — 
 For the first, moreover, a moderate degree only of judgment, 
 diligence and ability are requisite to arrange the materials 
 which are ready to our hands, whilst for the proper dev elope- 
 ment of the other, so much of penetration, and sagacious ac- 
 quaintance with all the bearings of the subject, so much in- 
 sight into its connections with the varying complexities of hu- 
 man motive and action, is absolutely indispensable, as, in one 
 mind however eminently endowed, are seldom found united. 
 To a mind indeed already imbued with the spirit of divine 
 truth, every page of holy writ teems with confirmation to his 
 faith, his heart and soul are prompt to echo back all that 
 sounds in unison with them — and it demands neither talent, 
 nor eloquence to urge them convincingly on a believing or pre- 
 disposed audience. But to wrestle with an enemy, instead of 
 going hand in hand with a friend, to move, not through the 
 peace of an allied country, but the hostility of a debateable 
 territory, to fight the sceptic with his own weapons, to retort, 
 to his discomfiture, his own principles, to select a point which 
 shall not appeal to a subtle understanding only, for that the 
 infidel's sophistry will elude, nor to the heart, for that his feel- 
 ings will belie, to throw it out in due relief from the sur- 
 rounding surface, to render it so narrow as to bar es- 
 cape into generalities, so wide as to make its conclusion em- 
 brace the whole of which it is a part, this demands an effort of 
 genius and a consummate skill in wielding the weapons of ar- 
 gumentation, which are the attributes but of a favoured few ! 
 
 To bring home to an unbeliever any proof of the divinity of 
 our holy religion, from its internal construction, is a task more 
 arduous indeed than would at first sight be imagined. The 
 greater number of proofs generally urged are rather confirma- 
 tory of the external evidence, than independent evidences in 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 themselves, and too often seem, to a mind disposed to cavil, to 
 involve a prejudging of the question, a real petitio principii on 
 the point in debate. How strong an evidence of its origin, for 
 instance, is the heavenly purity of the Christian morality, the 
 sublimity of its doctrines, the practical beauty of its precepts, 
 its adaptation to all the circumstances of life, its connexion 
 with the common welfare of mankind ! — Yet urged as an un- 
 connected evidence, powerful to strengthen, omnipotent to 
 support, it still falls short of a perfect demonstration to prove 
 its divinity. Theologians themselves, by too often making 
 Christianity a mere republication of natural religion, have 
 weakened its effect, and from incapacity or treachery pro- 
 phaned the dignity of its commission ! So completely in 
 unison with the interests of our own bosoms, is the full de- 
 velopement of its moral system, that we are loth to allow, 
 that that, which, when unfolded, is so evident to us to com- 
 prehend, was above us to discover ; and that, though truly 
 worthy of God, it was beyond the grasp of man. Famili- 
 arity which strengthens the effect on the heart, lessens the 
 wonder to the understanding, and as the glories of the mate- 
 rial world could be duly appreciated by him only who, with 
 rational faculties completely matured, should be at once intro- 
 duced to their magnificence, so our dull and blunted faculties 
 could then only be duly impressed with the heavenliness of 
 the Christian morality, could they be led at one step from the 
 twilight caverns of Pagan Philosophy into the broad day-light, 
 and expanded firmament of the Christian Revelation! Col- 
 lectively indeed, as we have before observed, the force of these 
 evidences is irresistible, but separately they are incomplete; 
 Each urges to farther inquiry, and each suggests that the 
 whole system may be divine. But they fail of complete con- 
 viction, until we know that it was indeed ushered and heralded 
 immediately from above, that it trailed with it in its descent 
 to the earth, a portion of its celestial glories, and that the tetra- 
 grammaton of Jehovah, the undoubted and miraculous signet 
 of the Most High was visibly stamped upon its nativity. But 
 let us not be supposed to depreciate the value, or to underrate 
 
19 
 
 the importance of the internal evidence. They have in many 
 respects a decided advantage over the others ; and though, in 
 defiance of general opinion, we cannot admit that time, beyond 
 a certain and ascertainable point, progressively weakens the 
 historical testimony, yet a strong effort is required to throw 
 ourselves into past events, and to bring them vividly before 
 the eye of the mind. The external evidences, on the contrary, 
 are ever before us, fixed, abiding, unchangeable ; they appeal 
 to facts and laws in the nature of things, which every man can 
 appreciate; and whilst in the first case, the conclusion is self- 
 evident, and the premises alone demand proof, in this, the 
 premises are granted, the facts are admitted, and the conclu- 
 sion only which you would draw from them, is the subject of 
 debate. These remarks apply of course to the whole of re- 
 vealed religion collectively, to the Jewish and Christian Dis- 
 pensation considered as parts of the same great plan. They 
 hang indissolubly together ; their soul and spirit is one, the 
 genius of neither is fully intelligible without a knowledge of 
 both ; the Christian must admit the Divine Commission of 
 Moses, and, though the prejudices of the Jew in favour of the 
 perfection of the latter forbids his acceptance of the former, 
 yet to the unbeliever any proof of the divinity of the elder 
 covenant, will almost resistlessly force upon him that of the 
 later Dispensation. On the subject of internal evidence, no 
 one has taken a bolder or more authoritative position than the 
 author of the Divine Legation of Moses, Demonstrated ; none 
 has selected a point of internal proof more free from the objec- 
 tions which have been stated, and in the abundant use which 
 he makes of the Christian Scriptures to prove his principal 
 position in respect to the genius of the Jewish, none is more 
 deeply engaged in the evidence in support of both. A com- 
 plete discussion of the subject demands a degree of theological 
 knowledge, which nothing but long years of study and masterly 
 genius could supply ; its most subordinate parts afford room 
 for volumes, and the disputes in the Christian world to which 
 it has given rise open a boundless field for instructive specula- 
 tion. To notice the principal features of this celebrated work 
 
20 
 
 is all that is attempted here ; and even this has rendered ne- 
 cessary a multitude of preliminary remarks on the spirit of 
 religious controversy, and the Christian evidences in general, 
 which nothing but the intimate bearing they have on the body 
 of the subject, hardly intelligible without them, could perhaps 
 have justified. For the very title of the work suggests to the 
 mind a vague idea of doubt and difficulty, and the name of 
 Warburton has become but another appellation for paradox, 
 and the strongest synonyme of theological controversy ! 
 
21 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 General character of Warburton's genius — as exemplified in his 
 great work — general reflections on the matter and style of the 
 Divine Legation — as a literary production. 
 
 IN whatever light we regard the Divine Legation, it must 
 be received as an astonishing production, a phenomenon to 
 which the whole extent of our literature scarce affords a paral- 
 lel, a master-piece which gives its author a just and undoubted 
 title to immortality. At this distance of time, when the 
 mingled wonder and terror, with which its first appearance was 
 marked, have subsided into calmness, when the mists with 
 which party spirit has involved it, have in some degree been 
 dissipated, and we can now view, without the idolatry of dis- 
 ciples, or the bitterness of rivals, this greatest monument of a 
 genius that has passed away, whatever may be the judgment 
 given on the opinions which it perpetuates, the extraordinary 
 talents which planned and completed it, are universally con- 
 fessed. And now that it is no longer thought necessary to im- 
 pugn the principles of the writer, when we no longer see he- 
 resy in every opinion, thwart his reasonings when undeniable, 
 or charge him with wilful error when wrong, the most eccen- 
 tric theories of Warburton may be contemplated with a more 
 kind and indulgent eye. The wild sallies of a restless imagina- 
 tion, rather than the errors of a perverted reason, they spring 
 more from the ambition to discover truth in a new direction, than 
 a desire to overthrow it in. an old one, from the consciousness of 
 strength that will only wrestle with what is difficult, than the 
 perverseness that will only display itself in advocating what is 
 false — not from the longing to deceive, but from a passion to 
 dazzle, surprise, and to confound. The whole mind of War- 
 burton was formed on a gigantic model j its powers and its 
 passions were both raised above the general scale of human 
 
22 
 
 nature, and all alike betokened an extraordinary man. He was 
 one of those intellects, which are occasionally raised up to show 
 the growth which the human faculties may attain ; intellects 
 which are all things to themselves; which defy calculation, 
 and belie experience ; which shake, in the waywardness of 
 their motions, the existing order of things ; make or overturn 
 systems ; found sects or dynasties ; religions or heresies, and 
 form eras and epochs in history and science ; intellects born to 
 rule, to reform, or to destroy ; that shine with auspicious light, 
 or dazzle with disastrous splendour ; and, as times and circum- 
 stances may direct their course, become the curses or the bles- 
 sings of mankind. Self-formed and self-created, the turbulence 
 of his passions unchastened by society, the originality of his 
 mind unschooled by any master, with powers boundless as his 
 ambition, and self-confidence equal to both, ardent to conceive 
 and industrious to execute, with abilities too vast for subordina- 
 tion, yet a temper too tyrannical to command, Warburton, in 
 whatever sphere he had moved, would have stood preeminently 
 first, thwarted, opposed, hated, yet fixed in undoubted supre- 
 macy. In times of civil discord, he would have been the head 
 of a domineering faction j in a period of religious repose, he 
 became a theological despot ; with a spirit of opposition in his 
 very obedience, the champion of the Divine Legation arro- 
 gantly prescribed to the cause he upheld the means of defence ; 
 creative even in upholding what exists, the author of the 
 Union between Church and State, seems the founder and legis- 
 lator of both ; he speculated in theology with all the freedom 
 of literature ; he dogmatized in literature with all the exclu- 
 siveness of theology ; absolute even in his affections, he exacted 
 obedience before he requited love, and his friendship was but 
 the protection of a superior ; terrible in his vengeance, he in- 
 timidated the fearful, he crushed the weak, and hurled scorn 
 and defiance on the strong ; till loved and hated, adored and 
 calumniated, the pillar of his mighty mind gave way under 
 excess of excitement, and the author of the Divine Legation 
 sunk into idiotcy and a premature grave — bequeathing his 
 faults to his enemies, his virtues to his friends, and his immor- 
 
23 
 
 tality to a just posterity. Endowed with the highest attributes 
 of the sublimest genius, those lesser faculties, which would 
 have been conspicuous in an inferior mind, are but satellites to 
 the master powers of his ; and his poignant wit and playful 
 fancy are lost in the overshadowing predominance of creative 
 vigor, boundless imagination, and consummate reason. His 
 imagination and reason traverse with matched and equal steps 
 the wide ground of his speculations— his reason supports his 
 imagination, his imagination prompts his reason — the first gives 
 consistency to chimeras, palpable substance to airy nothings ; 
 the last volatilizes truth, and gives a wildness to the most solid 
 argumentation. With a reason less robust, he had been a vi- 
 sionary enthusiast, with an imagination less vivid, he had been 
 a dry metaphysician — with both, tamed down from their su- 
 perfluous strength, he had been a more correct and a more use- 
 ful writer — with both as they are, he is a wonderful man, an 
 irregular but stupendous genius. Ordinary minds fail through 
 their weakness, great ones are ruined by their strength. See- 
 ing his point vividly, Warburton looked on it till he was daz- 
 zled ; wishing to give it prominence on the canvass, he gave it 
 monopoly ; penetrating and profound, fit to dive to the centre 
 of things, where others fell short, he went beyond ; where 
 others sought reason on the surface, he dragged systems from 
 the abyss, till the able expounder of a particular scheme dege- 
 nerated into a trafficker in theories. But the perversion of their 
 powers is the original sin of exalted minds ; the very fire 
 which gives a supernatural vigor to their motions, tempts them 
 into an eccentric orbit ; and the essential impetuosity, on whose 
 wings they shoot forward in the race, gives or seems to give 
 them an irregularity, which duller and better poised spirits 
 never exhibit. In the theatre of active life, there are not want- 
 ing examples of men whose minds are all spirit and energy 
 and enterprize ; who feed their craving for action on the tur- 
 bulent excitement of ambition ; who pine in peace ; who lan- 
 guish in repose; find in the ordinary employments of mankind 
 a living death, and seek in those rocks and waves and tem- 
 pests, in which the more weak or unskilful are ship-wrecked, 
 
24 
 
 o 
 
 the native elements of their minds. In like manner, in the in- 
 tellectual world, are minds cast in that energetic mould, whose 
 very being is their activity, and who are scarcely conscious of 
 existence, but in those violent exercises, which call into action 
 all the nerves, and muscles of their intellectual frame ; who 
 find or make fit employment for themselves, and, like War- 
 burton and Bayle, pervading human nature at a glance, seek 
 in the region of paradox room for the enlargement of their un- 
 wearied faculties. Such was Warburton, and the Divine Le- 
 gation bears from beginning to end, the evidence ( of its origi- 
 nal ; it is the genuine and legitimate offspring of such a mind, 
 with all the features of its parent, its strength and weakness, 
 its beauties and deformities, its boldness and extravagances in- 
 delibly engraven on it. 
 
 It seldom happens, that theological works can display that 
 combination of rare qualities which can raise them to the high- 
 est rank in general literature, or exalt their authors to those 
 niches which the voice of the world reserves for the statues of 
 first rate genius alone. They may exhibit learning the most 
 profound, research the most extensive, acuteness in exposing 
 error, logical precision in urging truth, wit may sharpen their 
 antitheses, fancy glitter in their illustrations, the living soul of 
 eloquence thunder and lighten in their periods ! But there are 
 inherent and peculiar difficulties to cope withal, there is a tech- 
 nicality, a peculiar and unaccommodating spirit; a narrowness 
 of subject, a something unfriendly to that creative and origi- 
 nal power, that incommunicable attribute of genius, invention, 
 which lays an interdict on them all, and forbids them from 
 mixing, in familiar brotherhood, with the great masters of the 
 human mind. The happy choice of the subject, and still more 
 felicitous course of argument which he has selected, has res- 
 cued the great work of Warburton from this disadvantage ; 
 and the consequence has been, that it belongs not to Divinity, 
 but to literature ; not to theologians, but to all who think or 
 read ; not to one generation, but to all ; not to his own country, 
 but to the world ! Never did a master hand elaborate a com- 
 position of more consummate mechanism ; there is a simplicity 
 
25 
 
 and variety of design, a unity and yet a diversity, a harmony 
 in the whole and a multiplicity in the parts, an extension of 
 subject and a compression of matter, an union of seeming con- 
 tradictions, and an attainment of apparent impossibilities which 
 mock panegyric, and make praise lag behind. Not winding 
 his way to truth through the labyrinths of reasoning, but 
 flashing on it from intuition, the wonder at the penetration 
 that could so discover, sinks in admiration of the industry that 
 could so unfold ; neither overpowered by vastness, nor bewil- 
 dered by complexity, he comprehended whilst he analysed, he 
 analysed whilst he comprehended. When we contemplate the 
 Divine Legation our ideas of great and small are confounded, 
 and our measure of magnitude enlarged. Like a stupendous 
 building, in the adaptation and symmetry that reign through- 
 out, our own minds are expanded into the elevation of the 
 scene before us, it is itself our whole horizon, and, in the ex- 
 clusion of all objects else from our view, all estimate and com- 
 parison are lost. It is by setting it by the side of other under- 
 takings, that, in the society of dwarfs, its colossal height is 
 discovered; if we look at the whole, we overlook its parts, 
 they too in their own greatness occupy the whole sphere of 
 vision ; each portion of the work is itself a work, perfect and 
 complete in itself, a world in a system of worlds, each admi- 
 rable in itself, yet gravitating towards a common centre, and 
 made more admirable still in that relation. Genius has here 
 tasked itself to a work of supererogation, and each book of 
 this great production had been enough to achieve its author's 
 immortality. Still its whole effect is certainly more to astonish 
 than to convince ; we read it as we do an epic poem ; we enter 
 on it with feelings wound up into painful expectation ; we 
 proceed with avidity, and tremble with impatience to dart to 
 the consummation of the plot ; but, as we advance, the in- 
 terest thickens, new characters crowd around us, strange 
 events startle us ; sometimes we hurry along on the high road 
 of the narrative, at others we are led aside into episodes, and 
 repose pur languishing fancy in their wild and romantic mag- 
 nificence, till we dream away all memory of our original ob- 
 
26 
 
 ject ; and when, at some sudden turn, it bursts upon us, we 
 sigh and fling away our task with no definable impression, 
 with a confounded sense of wonder, pleasure, and disappoint- 
 ment, with an exhausted attention, a dazzled imagination, and 
 a distracted brain. Yet great as is the length of the Divine 
 Legation, its vigour never flags ; its author never nods ; the 
 elasticity and youthfulness of genius, its prodigality of strength, 
 its light and airy step, are evident throughout ; the very ex- 
 tremities are warm with the same blood that circulates about 
 the heart ; every atom is instinct with vitality ; every frag- 
 ment, quick with spirit, and the whole is pervaded with the 
 same resistless splendour, inexhaustible invention, and inex- 
 tinguishable fire ! This perhaps is one of its greatest praises, 
 and is, indeed, one to which a work of such an extent can so 
 seldom make good a claim, that an exemption from the un- 
 evennesses, the alternate risings and sinkings to which works 
 of genius are chartered, is sufficient, in itself, to stamp the 
 extraordinary mind of its author. Branching, as his subject 
 does, far and wide, encumbered with innumerable difficulties, 
 involving him in war witli enemies the most formidable, he 
 has traced all those ramifications, removed those obstacles, 
 overcome those adversaries ! The Divine Legation, in its pre- 
 sent form, wears war on its front — it is built on the wrecks 
 and ruins of other systems, and becoming the tomb of its op- 
 ponents, has incorporated their remains into its own substance ; 
 like those rocks which have included in their formation the 
 bones and organic remains of the former world, out of whose 
 destruction they are said to have sprung. It is possible, in- 
 deed, that some part of its spirit may be attributable to this 
 cause, that its edge is sharpened by controversy, its mettle 
 kindled by incessant opposition, and the current of the work 
 chafed and roughened into strength by the obstacles that op- 
 posed its passage — yet this, while it diminishes the wonder 
 which the buoyant interest of the Divine Legation naturally 
 excites, only adds to the blended versatility and vigour of those 
 talents which only sought refreshment in a change of labour, 
 expanded the surface without lessening the depth of their at- 
 
27 
 
 tainments, turned the arms that opposed them into trophies, 
 and rifling the most distant regions of the intellectual world, 
 made their productions, not the mere luxuries, but the neces- 
 saries of their subject. The Divine Legation is indeed the 
 store-house into which all the treasures of Warburton's reading 
 have been prodigally accumulated — no economy of authorities, 
 no calculated sufficiency of learning — but a vast encyclopedia 
 of universal knowledge. Leaving to others to cultivate par- 
 ticular spots, and to dream that the mountains, which bounded 
 their little vallies, were the horizon of the mental world, the 
 ambition of Warburton has here grasped at universal domi- 
 nion ! Making the elegancies of ancient and modern litera- 
 ture the light toys of his leisure, he fearlessly grappled with 
 the abstruseness of both, boldly flung himself into the chaos 
 of ancient metaphysics, groped a perilous way through the 
 darkness of their abortive systems, and, alternately, the his- 
 torian of philosophy, and the philosopher of history, the hap- 
 py expounder of fables, and the fabulist of simple facts, the 
 unfolder of mysteries, and the perverter of evident meanings, 
 scholar, disputant, and divine, his reasoning confounds us, 
 where it does not convince ; his imagination dazzles, where 
 his reasoning fails ; and his information astonishes, where his 
 reasoning is unmarked, and his imagination unfelt. Yet with 
 all his learning, his mind was much too vigorous for pedantry ; 
 it is multifarious without confusion, it is immense without cum- 
 brousness. That which to another would have been an intel- 
 lectual plethory, was converted in him into the healthful 
 juices of his mind — that which, to others, would have en- 
 cumbered the surface of the understanding, was melted and 
 incorporated into itself, by the active fire of his ! 
 
 Perhaps Warburton was less fitted for the exercise of verbal 
 criticism, than for that of any other faculty, which the manifold 
 objects of his work called into active exertion. It demanded a 
 calmness, which the impetuosity of the man disturbed — an 
 impartiality, which the interest of the theorist refused — a mi- 
 nuteness of knowledge, which the wide pursuits of the general 
 scholar precluded. The inventive faculty was so strong as to 
 
28 
 
 disturb the exercise of the judgment, and alternately influenc- 
 ing and influenced by the passion for system, proceeded to 
 give a form, a roundness, and a consistence to the most mangled 
 and unconnected fragments ; a perfection which, while it 
 amuses as a hypothesis, startles as a datum for reasoning, and, 
 admirable as imagination, becomes absolutely unwarrantable as 
 criticism. Yet let us not withhold even here the full admira- 
 tion, which the unrivalled talents of the theorist demand. It 
 is true that, like a sculptor, who from the leg or arm of an 
 antique statue, should pretend to restore the original figure, 
 complete it and title it • or like a painter, who should colour 
 up the dim outlines of an old fresco into the grouping of a 
 finished picture, Warburton evokes full-limbed systems out of 
 slight or indifferent facts, and holds up his own creation, as the 
 figure certain, and undoubted, of long-lost truth ; yet such is 
 the power of the magician, that the understanding sinks, al- 
 most without resistence, into the arms of the imagination, and, 
 though the coldness of returning reason disdains the illusion, 
 yet, while the spell is on us, we gaze, it is true, with a convic- 
 tion that is half incredulity, but with an incredulity that is 
 more than half conviction, on the shadows that are so like rea- 
 lity. But there are subjects not a few, where, without imagin- 
 ation, the mere power of argument would avail nothing — where 
 the happiest conjecturer has the best chance of success, and 
 the ablest theorist is most likely to find his hypothesis borne 
 out by substantial facts. Fortunately for Warburton, though 
 his principal theory should be disputed, yet more than one of 
 his subordinate hypotheses is supported by an accumulation of 
 proof, a fertility, closeness, and strength of argument, and, in 
 one case at least, by an eloquency of appeal to the laws and 
 instincts of the human mind, as developed by the expression of 
 its movements in language and writing, that cavil is silenced, 
 and scepticism itself surprised into approbation. The essays 
 on picture writing, and the mysteries, and, above all, the for- 
 mer, are as brilliant efforts, as genius in its happiest moments, 
 ever produced ; and Warburton is no where greater, than 
 when he carries the torch into the very cell of the Eleusinian 
 
29 
 
 Temple, and darting through all the clouds which time, sophis- 
 try, ignorance, and learning, had industriously flung over the 
 history of hieroglyphics ; becomes the interpreter, and, as it 
 were, the prophet of the past ; instructs the antients in the 
 meaning of their own inventions ; teaches the moderns the 
 progress of the antients by the history of their own ; cuts at a 
 stroke the knot which both had conspired to tie, converts mys- 
 tery into simplicity, and what seemed audacious paradox into 
 self-evident truth. Such were the advantages and disadvant- 
 ages of this characteristic of Warburton's genius — at home in 
 difficulties — at a loss, in simplicities — a dangerous interpreter 
 where cool investigation is demanded — a consummate guide 
 where a searching stroke of genius is required — a high autho- 
 rity where the solution of some dark question is at stake — a 
 treacherous master where general rules for theological investiga- 
 tion are at issue. But that the Divine Legation will ever have 
 such an effect is little to be dreaded ; the immediate school of 
 Warburton, the satellites that reflected his greatness, have long 
 since died away, and, generally speaking, the divines of the 
 present day are more inclined to gaze aloof on the strange phe- 
 nomenon, and allow it to blaze, unapproached, than to catch 
 the sparks that issue from it, or fill their censers from its unhal- 
 lowed fire. Indeed none but a mind of kindred powers could 
 venture to tread the path which Warburton has traversed with 
 so firm and vigorous a step ; his arms and weapons are those 
 of a giant, would overwhelm, with their weight, a frame 
 less robust, and are better fitted to be hung up for the gaze of 
 curiosity, than worn for actual service. Yet when we consider 
 the boldness and extent of the undertaking, there is greater 
 reason to wonder at its general success, than at its partial fail- 
 ures, and to congratulate the cause which he has advocated on 
 those exhaustless resources, and unparalleled combination of 
 talents which could alone have triumphed in an argument 
 which, from its novelty, would have daunted the timid, and, 
 from its difficulty, have overwhelmed the feeble. It is the pe- 
 culiar prerogative of genius that there is always something to 
 redeem its worst errors ; there is that adaptation and natural 
 
30 
 
 sympathy between its constitution and general truth, which 
 brings them almost irresistibly together — its very fantasies are 
 more valuable than the sober reasonings of others — it may not 
 be completely right, but it can scarcely ever be utterly wrong. 
 And such was the case with this extraordinary man, in whose 
 mind, as in all men of first rate abilities, there was an energetic 
 vigour of reasoning, a strong, piercing, and available good 
 sense, which provided ample ballast to that power of imagina- 
 tion, which, whilst in others it would have first dissolved and 
 then borne away the whole frame, was only the plumes and 
 the wings to the mind of Warburton. Whilst therefore it is 
 for the enemies of his fame to weigh every error in the balance, 
 to calculate the exact depth of his falls, and to exult in that 
 perversion which warped to a certain degree, all his faculties, 
 no attentive and unbiassed reader of the Divine Legation can 
 do otherwise than allow, that there is no perversion without in- 
 dubitable marks of the better power, no fault that does not 
 claim alliance with an excellence ; that in the controversalist there 
 is still the air of a genuine searcher for truth, and in the theorist 
 the stamp of a logical and accurate reasoner ; nor ought our 
 censure to visit, with loose and indiscriminate severity, even 
 that tone of irony, overbearing pride and arrogant contempt, 
 which run through many portions of the Divine Legation. — 
 Never was a production of great, and acknowledged merit, of 
 eccentric, but undoubted ability, greeted with a less favourable 
 reception than that work ; all its enemies, without sharing the 
 talents, caught the exaggerated passions of its author — male- 
 volence without an atom of charity, misrepresentation with- 
 out truth, criticism without discrimination, fixed on it at once 
 as their common prey. Churchmen and dissenters, the infidel 
 and the christian advocate, the dogmatist and the sceptic, the 
 haters of paradox and the lovers of truth, were startled from 
 their security by the fearless speculatist, caught the spirit of 
 theological hatred, sounded, far and wide, the trumpet of an 
 exterminating crusade, and banded their motley and discordant 
 phalanx against the common enemy. 
 
 Planning his design in retirement, and building, in silence 
 
31 
 
 and obscurity, the monument of his future greatness, Warbur- 
 ton was ushered, in a moment, into the tumult and contention 
 of the literary arena ; having added, as he thought, a new and 
 impregnable bulwark to the Christian faith, he was branded, 
 by its old defenders, as a traitor and renegade to its legitimate 
 defence ; the vindicator of the rights, and expounder of the 
 privileges of the Church, he was laid under the ban, as an in- 
 novator, and his aid rejected, as an adventurer ; conscious of 
 upright intentions, and sensible of vast abilities, he saw the 
 one calumniated and the other despised ; an orthodox believer 
 and a logical reasoner, he was treated as half heretic, half 
 sophist ; his opinions were held in horror, as the adulterate 
 coinage of the one, and his reasonings in contempt, as the 
 flimsy cobwebs of the other. Warburton had not the meek- 
 ness that shunned polemic contention, like Newton, nor the 
 irresolution that shrunk disheartened from his task, like Cud- 
 worth ; gifted with much of the genius of the former, and all 
 the learning of the latter, and more than the self-confidence of 
 both, his natural overbearingness chafed by resistance, and his 
 pride irritated by competition, he roused himself to crush what 
 he deemed the hornets that stung him, turned the talents 
 which he had employed in the defence of religion to the vindi- 
 cation of his fame, and the arms with which he had assailed 
 the enemies of the common faith, against the detractors of his 
 own — nor in truth, however we may condemn, ought we to be 
 surprised at the acrimonious spirit, which tinctures the contro- 
 versial writings of such a man as Warburton, when we see the 
 unjustifiable excesses into which Lowth, his only adequate 
 antagonist, was hurried by the heat of discussion, and the fury 
 of debate. Still less at the contempt, with which he treats the 
 swarm of inferior adversaries with whom it was his fate to 
 contend, when we remember among them such writers as 
 Webster, Tillard, Morgan, and Bate, men who may be ranked 
 foremost in the pestilent tribe of answerers by profession, and 
 who derive their only title to distinction from the light, with 
 which the vengeance of some distinguished opponent illumi- 
 nates the obscurity of their names. It was, moreover, the 
 
32 
 
 peculiar destiny of the Divine Legation, that it was not merely 
 the principal argument of the work, and the theories which 
 form its main support, which excited public attention, and 
 called forth animadversion and controversy, but almost every 
 incidental remark on any subject of interest was dignified by 
 its own peculiar answer, and boasts its own appropriate attack 
 and defence. The strictures, which, in the dedication to his 
 work, Warburton has strongly and forcibly made on the abuse 
 of ridicule, in the dispute between Christianity and Freethink- 
 ers, were combated by Akenside, and the successful poet of 
 the imagination became the feeble advocate of the philosopher 
 of the characteristics ; a few remarks, on the action of the 
 same propensities of the human mind, in the genius of Heathen 
 and Papal superstition, were assailed by the acute pen of 
 Middleton, and the short introductory remarks on the compa- 
 rative importance of internal and external evidence were 
 thought worthy of a public animadversion by a Prelate of the 
 Established Church. 
 
 If such be the fair allowances, and such the fair palliations, 
 which that intolerant and overbearing temper towards oppo- 
 nents of the same faith, which is deemed so peculiar to War- 
 burton, justly demands, still less founded in truth and reason 
 are objections raised against the same spirit, as displayed in 
 every page of his writings towards the infidel and sceptical 
 authors, in the refutation of whose opinions so large a portion 
 of his work is employed. On general subjects of literary dis- 
 putation, in the serious and sober discussion of the principles 
 of religion, natural and revealed, still more in the examina- 
 tion of other points, which, however interesting and impor- 
 tant, are yet not essential, and fairly admit even of a wide 
 difference in sentiment and opinion, a regard alike to the in- 
 terests of truth, public utility, and personal respect exacts, as 
 a duty, the observance of courtesy and indulgent kindness. 
 But on subjects, where the disputants must be as far asunder 
 as earth from heaven, where the features of hostility are too 
 broad for any mask of conventional hypocrisy to conceal, woe 
 to the fastidiousness that would emasculate the voice of manly 
 
33 
 
 feeling into the effeminacy of ill-placed delicacy ! It is for the 
 sceptic, to whom all things, but the privilege to doubt, are 
 indifferent, to balance phrases, and measure to a hair the nice- 
 ties of etiquette ; but to the Christian advocate, whose feelings 
 are outraged at the same moment that his reason is offended, 
 the tone of indignation is that which nature prescribes, and 
 which good taste, her faithful follower, will never condemn. 
 
 Where others are the defenders of religion, Warburton 
 stands forth as her self-invited champion — others wait the as- 
 sault, he carries far and wide the fire and sword of an invader 
 — others assert the superiority, he the majesty of truth — others 
 treat infidelity with the abhorrence of a honest heart, he with 
 the contempt of a commanding intellect- — others have attacked 
 it with separate powers, with acuteness, with learning, with 
 eloquence, Warburton with them all combined, has fulminated 
 his vengeance on its head with the concentrated powers of 
 genius. There is something bold, and almost sublime, in the 
 dedication of this work to the freethinkers ; something start- 
 ling in the insulting confidence with which he summons those, 
 whose systems he has overturned, to witness their own ruin, 
 and try and handle the instruments of their own overthrow. 
 Nothing is more admirable than the vigour with which this 
 intellectual giant wrestles with infidelity, wherever it presents 
 an assailable front ; than the skill with which he hunts the 
 fleeting sophistry through all its doublings, drags it from its 
 den, and makes it unlink, coil by coil, its noxious length; 
 nothing more daring than the courage with which he gives a 
 stability to the Protean fallacy, only to bind it fast ; a shape to 
 the mist-like ambiguity, only to overthrow it ; nothing more 
 eloquent than the indignation with which he tramples on the 
 evil spirit with which he contends, whether it lurks in the 
 shape of a reptile, or, like Milton's archangel, wears somewhat 
 of obscured greatness, whether it dazzles in the eloquence of 
 Bolingbroke, or disgusts in the ribaldry of Toland ; nothing 
 more imposing than the strength, with which he strips every 
 covering from the deformed error, and holds it up, in its na- 
 tive nakedness, to the scorn and derision of the world. Such 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 then are the principal characteristics of Warburton's intellec- 
 tual and moral temperament as suggested by the Divine Lega- 
 tion, and which are the stronger, as never author impressed 
 on every page more decided marks of his peculiarities — and 
 such are the most distinguished appearances which are ex- 
 hibited by that celebrated work. The style, in which it is 
 written, is well worthy of the subject, and though formed, as 
 his biographer tells us, on the professed study of rhetorical 
 rules, it bears all the features of unweakened originality, and 
 is indeed, in an eminent degree, characteristic of its author's 
 mind. Flowing without diffuseness, concise without obscurity, 
 it expresses obvious ideas simply, subtle thoughts precisely, 
 great thoughts nobly, and all, idiomatically and purely. Dis- 
 daining all the coxcombry of style, it has all the free graces 
 which manly elegance can give ; without affected antithesis, 
 it abounds in striking contrasts j and, with a certain splendid 
 economy of words, runs on in a stream, always clear, always 
 strong, often rapid, impetuous, and overbearing, and coloured 
 every now and then by the sudden gleams of an imagination 
 of singular vividness and intensity ! 
 
35 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Argument of the Divine Legation stated — doctrine of future 
 reward and punishment how far necessary to Society — How 
 Warbur ton s first Proposition is to be limited. 
 
 NOR does the principal theory of the work come before us 
 with circumstances less imposing than its splendid accessories ; 
 it bears novelty on its front, boldness in it enunciation, de- 
 monstration in its results. It courts not persuasion, but exacts 
 conviction ; it shelters not its weakness under the wing of pro- 
 bability, nor its modesty under the favourable construction of 
 its readers, but arrogates to its shape the precision of a logical 
 syllogism, and to its evidence the certainty of a mathematical 
 theorem. To its apparent novelty the character of the author 
 would in itself be ample testimony, avowing, as he does, that 
 floating aloof from the high-road of established opinion, he 
 sought, far and wide, in the boundless relations of things, for 
 undiscovered evidence ; its real novelty is abundantly proved 
 by the terror which the appearance of the bold stranger struck 
 into the minds of his contemporaries, and however evident the 
 propositions, which are the pillars of his hypothesis, may have 
 separately appeared to other writers who had turned their 
 attention to the subject, the connexion between the two facts 
 and its resulting consequences is, undoubtedly, the sole disco- 
 very of Warburton. 
 
 That civil society must be dissolved, unless the doctrine of 
 a future state of rewards and punishments binds its elements 
 together, and supplies from the terrors, which are treasured up 
 in another world, motives to virtue which this cannot hold forth, 
 and that, if any society can be shown to exist without it, the 
 absence of such belief necessarily implies an immediate inter- 
 position of Providence ; that, moreover, such doctrines are not 
 to be found in, nor did make part of the Mosaic Dispensation, 
 are the two great propositions, which are asserted in the Divine 
 
36 
 
 Legation. That a future state was not to be found in the law, had 
 been long urged by infidel writers as a decisive proof against 
 the divine commission of the Hebrew Lawgiver, and the Apolo- 
 gists of Revelation fully conceding the great principle of their 
 opponents, had been employed, by every art of theological in- 
 genuity, in eliciting the doctrine in question from the Mosaic 
 records ; and having predetermined that, in whatever disguise 
 it lurked, it ought to be discoverd there, retorted the assertion 
 of their adversaries, and maintained that it did really form an 
 integral sanction of the Jewish law. Such was the state of 
 the argument when it was taken up by Warburton, in whose 
 hands it assumed an appearance totally different from its for- 
 mer state. He did not, like his predecessors, put the Penta- 
 teuch to the rack, to extort from its unwilling lips the answer 
 which he was resolved to have, nor attempt to clothe an unten- 
 able assertion in shreds and patches of scripture texts, but al- 
 lowing to its fullest extent the proposition of his infidel oppo- 
 nents, denies the conclusion which they would draw from it, 
 fights them with their own weapons, accepts their challenge on 
 their own conditions, and from the omission of the doctrine 
 professes to draw the divinity of the Legation. In the former 
 state of the question, the common ground between sceptics and 
 divines was the necessary and indispensible connection between, 
 a divine revelation, and the inculcation, as a sanction, of a future 
 state of reward and punishment, in the present, the omission of 
 that doctrine by Moses — in the first, the defender of the Mosaic 
 mission undertook to prove, that the mark of divinity in ques- 
 tion really belonged to the law ; in the latter case, to show 
 against one party, that the omission was real, and that the in- 
 fidel was correct in his assertion ; against the other, that, by the 
 consent of all nations, the omission could be supplied only by 
 immediate aid from heaven, and against both, that it was not 
 derogatory to the divine dignity of a revelation that it should 
 rest its sanctions on temporal blessings and curses. Nor is this 
 the whole of the question which the author has undertaken to 
 prove ; for each of his propositions is burthened by an addition, 
 entailing as much difficulty as the principal questions ; and not 
 
37 
 
 only the omission of the doctrine of Moses, but its ignorance 
 by the Jews ; not only the existence of an extraordinary but of 
 an equal providence to particulars, seem considered by himself 
 as important, and, by his adversaries, as absolutely essential to 
 his theory. 
 
 That a belief in a future state of rewards and punishments 
 is necessary to the well-being of civil society, is the first propo- 
 sition, which the author of the Divine Legation undertakes to 
 prove. In the state of things under which we ourselves are 
 placed, our mental vision is cleared from its natural films, the 
 end and relations of our being are written before us, as with a 
 sunbeam, and the voice of the preacher, day after day ringing in 
 our ears, renders the thought of eternity and all its tremendous 
 progeny of sorrows and joys, familiar things, connate ideas in- 
 separable from our moral and intellectual constitution. The 
 proposition in question, therefore, appears a self-evident truth, 
 and yet, if closely examined, it will seem neither so undoubted, 
 nor so precise, nor so exactly squared to the conclusions deduced 
 from it, as a first sight could suggest it to be. For just so far 
 only as the belief in a state of future reward and punishment 
 is absolutely necessary to social existence, and no further, will 
 the omission of the doctrine demonstrate the substitution in its 
 place of a superior and supernatural agency. It is undoubted 
 indeed, that to the perfection of society, to such a moulding of 
 its constituent parts as shall at once ensure the greatest possible 
 good to individuals and to the whole, the doctrine in question 
 is absolutely essential. But the existence of a thing, or a con- 
 stitution of things in its best possible state, and its existence in 
 a certain degree only of excellence, the ordinary lot of humanity, 
 are evidently distinct, and the confusion between these two 
 ideas has certainly led Warburton to press this point further 
 than strictness of reasoning will justify him in doing. In the 
 account which he has given of the origin of society, there is 
 not that distinctness either of thought or of expression which 
 usually characterizes his manner, and, like most writers on the 
 subject, he is confused in accounting for the origin of that 
 which we know to have been coeval with the human race, to 
 
38 
 
 have arisen necessarily from the constitution of their nature on 
 one hand, and their relative situation in regard to those around 
 them on the other. To speak of a state of natural independence 
 farther than is necessary to adjust the theory of social and per- 
 sonal rights is plainly a hypothetical assumption, not a fact. — 
 Society, in strictness of speech, was framed originally neither 
 for the sake of being (rov wou) nor of well-being, (tov w «vat) 
 existence or profit, but arising necessarily from the consitution 
 of things, was afterwards continued, regulated, and perfected 
 for the sake of both. To this regulated state, where the duties 
 and prerogatives of the magistrate are ascertained with tolera- 
 ble exactness, and where necessity and experience have given 
 some order and arrangement to the rules to be observed for its 
 defence, as such an arrangement is the result of compact, and 
 compact is the essence of social union as it now exists, the term 
 civil society, with the above reservation as to its commence- 
 ment, is with propriety applied. Such a society, as far as its 
 compact goes, consists in checking, by appropriate punish- 
 ments, the inroads of self-love on the security of the person or 
 property of others. Temporal terrors are the instruments 
 which it employs, and as it calls those into action, only because 
 religion, which had an antecedent and independent existence, 
 was inadequate to the task, and, as it exercises them without 
 any reference whatever to a tribunal in another world, the fun- 
 damental principles of the social union, as far as they are enforc- 
 ed on offenders, who will always be the minority in a state, are 
 beyond doubt independent of future punishment and reward. 
 But it may be said, that the great majority in a state, on whom 
 the hand of the law does not fall, are influenced in their 
 judgment and observance of the duties, the infringement of 
 which they condignly visit, by the doctrine, which in the other 
 case was, confessedly, of no effect or service whatever. But 
 this would scarcely be the case, should their belief have no di- 
 rect bearing on those acts which are prejudicial or otherwise to 
 society, and still less so, should it directly encourage and imme- 
 diately sanction the breach of many laws which are conducive 
 to its welfare, and absolutely essential to its perfection. This 
 
39 
 
 will be the more readily confessed, should it appear, on examina- 
 tion, that even the duties of imperfect obligation which are more 
 peculiarly the province of religion to enforce, may, to a very 
 considerable extent, be observed and practised without the aid 
 in question. It is difficult and impossible to measure the exact 
 influence of any principle which, like religion, issues its edicts 
 from the chambers of the heart, and exercises its dominion, 
 unheard, and unseen ; but a slight glance at the genius and 
 effects of paganism will be more than enough to show us how 
 feeble was its power to check vice, encourage virtue, or estab- 
 lish the substantial interests of society ! It is indeed from the 
 religions of paganism, and from them alone, that the proposi- 
 tion in debate can be proved, and to examine it by present 
 sentiments, or to make our enlarged views the standard of the 
 past, would be erroneous in fact, and illogical in argument. It 
 is futile to urge, on mere general grounds, the expediency of 
 such sanctions, if their influential weight in this particular 
 case cannot be proved ; and to show the existence of the sanc- 
 tion would be equally vain, unless the existence of some unseen 
 being or beings, who established that sanction, shall likewise 
 be proved ; and even the fact of such beings would still be 
 inconclusive to the point, unless they be of such acknowledged 
 attributes as to lead to a necessary connection between punish- 
 ment to come and what is detrimental to the state on one 
 hand, and between reward to come, and that which is service- 
 able to it, on the other. To all purposes of reward the pagan 
 creed of a future state was utterly unfitted, and in the shadowy 
 receptacle of departed spirits, the region of unsubstantial 
 pleasures, the mere mimicry of life, Homer paints his phan- 
 tom-heroes as unsatisfied with the homage of the inferior 
 shades, sighing for the upper world they had left behind them, 
 and mourning, in their visionary elysium, for the more real 
 earth which they had lost for ever. The islands of the blessed, 
 which the genius of Pindar has consecrated to us, were the 
 reserved abodes of heroes, and of demi gods, the especial fa- 
 vourites of Jupiter, and, safe in that ocean whose breezes were 
 said to refresh their fairy shores, they denied their enjoyments 
 
40 
 
 to the souls of ordinary mortals. Even the paradise of Virgil, 
 with its purple light and broader firmament, has, in its frui- 
 tion, the same airy and impalpable being, and concludes its 
 brief period, its puny eternity, by the waters of oblivion, and 
 the unconscious forgetfulness of re-existence ! Such was the 
 reward which was held out to uphold the courage of virtue 
 and muzzle the madness of impotent appetites, and when, on 
 the other hand, we regard the terrors of the pagan hell, there 
 is a child-like particularity, a variety of poetical imagination 
 about it, which the strong-minded would reject with contempt, 
 and even the weakest learn to fling aside among the rods and 
 fool-caps of the nursery. Nor can it be objected, that this is 
 rather the creed of poets, than the popular belief; for poets, 
 in this case, were the only prophets ; tradition the only chan- 
 nel of information ; and the Iliad and Odyssey their bible and 
 text-book. These were the only sanctions which religion, as 
 religion, had to give, or which the legislator dared absolutely 
 to confirm. And when we turn from them to the divinities, 
 whose attributes alone could ensure their execution ; when we 
 gaze on the symbols of their abominations, the stocks and the 
 stones wherein they were personified, lust translated to Olym- 
 pus, revenge and blood-shed deified, the passions of reprobate 
 man scowling and leering from the throne of God, and, far 
 aloof from this motley and revolting assemblage, a gloomy des- 
 tiny riding triumphant over all ; to think of this, and imagine 
 for a moment that such a creed, so sanctioned, could contri- 
 bute to the happiness, or was necessary to the existence of 
 social order, charity must be carried to imbecility, faith to cre- 
 dulity, and prejudice to absolute blindness. If such be the 
 case in regard to a future state of reward and punishment, 
 and such the little influence it could have had on the real in- 
 terests of the community, it may be asked, where are we to 
 look for any countervailing power which, in spite of that 
 black catalogue of crimes given to us by the apostle, could keep 
 the frame-work of heathen society together ? We must look 
 for it in those moral instincts, which nothing can obliterate ; 
 we must look for it in that beneficent arrangement of things, 
 
41 
 
 which has made the expedient, in all cases, and the agreeable, 
 in most, coincident with virtue and justice ; which has con- 
 trived, by self-interest, and a thousand dependencies on the 
 good opinion of our fellow creatures, to maintain the predo- 
 minance of virtue under the most depressing circumstances, 
 and to make connate with the human mind a principle of true 
 religion strong enough to gleam through the clouds of super- 
 stition, and to cherish some remnants of truth amidst all the 
 impieties and absurdities of pagan idolatry. To these causes, 
 therefore, and not to the exclusive influence of a belief in a 
 future state of reward and punishment, which, not so Jar as 
 it existed, but so far as it practically influenced, seems consi- 
 derably over-rated, would we attribute the well-being of so- 
 ciety among the nations of antiquity. Magistrates and philo- 
 sophers, we know, positively rejected the doctrine, and, in its 
 moral influence on individuals, it must have acted, if it acted 
 at all, in spite of the popular creed, and in so far as it differed 
 from, not so far as it coincided with, the national religion. 
 That no national religion indeed could or did sustain itself 
 without it is abundantly evident ; but it arose from this circum- 
 stance, that such religion was founded in all cases on impres- 
 sions antecedently existing in the members of the community ; 
 and since a future state is indisputably a part of that common 
 religious faith which has prevailed among every nation of the 
 globe, a statesman could not, if he would, have proscribed 
 the doctrine, nor would he, if he could, have denied a belief 
 which holds out to reason so convincing a solution of the ine- 
 qualities of providence, to the conscience a vengeance beyond 
 the grave, and to the legislator's pretensions a sanction to 
 obedience, the reality of which could never be disproved^ 
 But it was, notwithstanding, too indefinite and loose, too little 
 brought down to practice by an accompanying knowledge of 
 the nature and relations of moral* duty, to be any other than 
 an inactive principle. It was not in this doctrine, therefore,, 
 that the legislator, in reality, rested the service of religion to 
 the state ; it was rather by the inculcation of a peculiar and a 
 national providence ; it was by the immediate interposition of 
 
42 
 
 the god ; it was by making him the mouth-piece of the magis- 
 trate j by interpreting the visitations of nature into the instru- 
 ments of his vengeance ; by omens and auguries, and all the 
 machinery of priestcraft, the operation of whose wheels he 
 guided with his own hand ; it was by a thousand methods like 
 these that he moved, as with a lever, the passions and feelings 
 of an ignorant and superstitious multitude, while he occupied 
 their minds, and dazzled their senses by the altar and the tem- 
 ple, the pomps, and shows, and gorgeous ceremonial of a na- 
 tional religion. This attempt in the pagan world to make the 
 immediate interposition of heaven the great engine of go- 
 vernment, has wholly escaped the observation of War- 
 burton, and in his eagerness to give all possible relief 
 to the omission of a future state by Moses, he has given 
 an undue prominence to its power in other circumstances. 
 In urging the necessity of religion to the well-being of a 
 .state as exemplified by the conduct, and inculcated by the 
 precepts of the sages and philosophers of antiquity, he has for- 
 gotten that, whilst they dared not omit, and failed not to im- 
 press the doctrine in question, they showed, at the same mo- 
 ment, how little adequate they deemed it, without the applica- 
 tion of other instruments, to effect the purpose which they had 
 most at heart. The necessity of an oath, warranted by the dread 
 of some superior power, able to register, and resolute to avenge, 
 would seem to lead more directly, than any other civil act, to 
 the acknowledgment of a future state of retribution. Yet even 
 here the same disposition to look for the immediate interposi- 
 tion of supernatural power, and in default of its manifestation, 
 to discredit its existence altogether, is indisputably evident; 
 and when men reasoned on these inequalities and inconsisten- 
 cies, it rather led to the denial of any providence at all, than 
 to the acknowledgment of another world. And this for an 
 evident reason, since to conclude from the sufferings of virtue 
 here, that it will be rewarded hereafter, we must already have 
 distinctly settled in our own minds the Divine attributes of 
 justice and mercy, together with their immediate relation to 
 the affairs of men ; a combination of ideas to which no pagan 
 
43 
 
 ever distinctly reached. The celebrated lines of Claudian on 
 Rufinus, the remarks of the clown in the clouds of Aristo- 
 phanes, and the reasonings of Lucretius on the same subject, 
 mark out the channel, into which the thoughts of those who 
 reasoned, almost inevitably ran. There are two tales told by 
 Herodotus, one of a breach of trust by Glaucus, and another 
 of those men who were surrendered to Xerxes to atone for the 
 murder of his heralds, which are a further exemplification of 
 this looking for an instant interposition, and in the entailment 
 in both those cases of the death due to the parents on the chil- 
 dren, as a just retribution, lead us immediately to some of the 
 most striking characteristics of the Mosaic law. In short, in all 
 ages, and in those more particularly, where the notions of reli- 
 gion, either from its corruption or the want of natural light, 
 are vague and indistinct, there is a disposition in the human 
 mind to transfer to the moral the invariable laws of the phy- 
 sical world, and to place in this present scene of things the 
 reward of virtue, and the punishment of guilt. This subject 
 is very wide, and might be pursued much further ; but it may 
 be sufficient here to suggest, whether this coincidence between 
 the auguries of the human mind, and the Mosaic enactment, 
 the absolute arrogation to itself, on the part of the Jewish law, 
 of that ever present power to reward and to avenge, which was 
 only timidly insinuated by the politicians and legislators of the 
 heathen world, might not be successfully pressed much further 
 than has ever hitherto been attempted ; and more than supply 
 the deficiency we have noticed in Warburton's argument, in 
 his attempt to show, that society could not and did not exist, 
 save through the all-powerful influence of the doctrine of future 
 rewards and punishments. However this may be, it certainly 
 has ever co-existed with religious instinct, and with religion 
 in general been turned (with political purposes as the sole end) 
 to the civil uses of the community. In Warburton's statement 
 of this part of his subject, the speculations of the modern Peri- 
 patetic, Pomponatius, the ravings of Cardan, the impieties of 
 Collins, and the fine-wrought sophistries and dangerous Pyrr- 
 honism of Bayle, are examined and exposed, and the connexion 
 
44 
 
 between society and religion,, religion and a providence, pro- 
 vidence and another state of perfect retribution, established at 
 great length. We have next to examine therefore the actual 
 practice of lawgivers, and from Charondas and Zaleucus, names 
 dim in the mists of antiquity, down to Draco and Solon, names 
 familiar as our own, from the statesman whose institutions dyed 
 with their essential colouring the genius of republics, down to 
 the political romancer who framed laws for the Utopias of 
 his own brain, all with one voice proclaim the reality of a Pro- 
 vidence, introduce their respective codes under the sanction of 
 the Divinity, and raise the palladium of social existence, not in 
 the chamber of the senate or the tribunal of the judge, but in 
 the temple of the Gods. But Warburton has gone further, and, 
 by an examination of the pagan mysteries, and particularly the 
 most majestic of them all, those of the Eleusinean Ceres, has 
 shown that they too bear certain and infallible marks of having 
 been originally instituted for the same great purposes of state. 
 Under the immediate guardianship of the magistrate, venerable 
 in their antiquity, and hallowed as the most majestic rite and 
 sacrament of religion, the lesser mysteries unfolded the gates 
 of the temple to all the citizens of the state ; they awakened 
 all the awe of which the mind is susceptible, by tremendous 
 oaths and a terrific initiation, and, amidst alternate delight and 
 horror, the lightenings and thunder, the sights and sounds of 
 infernal torture on one hand, and the brightness of a mimic 
 Elysium on the other, the Hierophant revealed to the trembling 
 Neophyte the truths of a future state, and urged, by the hope 
 of especial rewards, the practice of virtue, and the purification 
 of the soul. In the greater mysteries, which were reserved ex- 
 clusively for the higher orders in the state, the origin of society, 
 the progress of religious worship from stellar idolatry, its fairest, 
 to that of brutes, its lowest form, the truth that the popular 
 Gods were but deifications of dead men, and the awful secret 
 that the true God of the universe was the Eternal One, formed 
 the still more instructive and jastounding revelation. The first 
 consisted of shows to impress the imagination of the multitude, 
 who were to be governed, the last were doctrines to illuminate 
 
45 
 
 the understanding of the few who were to govern, and to fit 
 them for the exercise of those popular illusions which were the 
 indispensible instruments of state policy. The bold conjectures 
 and adventurous steps which Warburton was obliged to take 
 for the explanation and developement of these extraordinary 
 institutions, have led him in one instance however to an extra- 
 vagant licentiousness of critical exposition. We feel the 
 general certainty of his conclusions, and bow to the crowd of 
 authorities which he has summoned together on the question, 
 in the Delphic hymn we listen delightedly to the song of the 
 initiated, in the descent of iEneas we doubt not but that we 
 behold the very pageantry of the mysterious cell, but when 
 the iEneid is metamorphosed into an essay on Government, 
 when our favourite heroes shrink from flesh and blood into 
 personifications of state maxims, when our passions are called 
 into action to feel for self-evident axioms, and our sympathies 
 assailed for political verities in masquerade, we begin with 
 vague curiosity, listen with stubborn incredulity, and at length 
 turn away from the unblushing allegorist in uncontroulable dis- 
 gust. From the legislators Warburton proceeds to the philoso- 
 phers of antiquity, whose declarations as to the political advan- 
 tages of religion and the doctrine of a future state, is no less fully, 
 and universally expressed. The evidence which is borne by 
 them to the importance of the doctrine is the more unequivocal, 
 because, from the contrast between their public declarations and 
 their private opinions, their esoteric and exoteric doctrine, their 
 declarations on the point could proceed from nothing, but a 
 full persuasion on one hand of the necessity of religion to the 
 commonwealth, and on the other, that a future state was the 
 very vital part of that religion, and lastly that to separate them 
 would go to destroy that influence which divine worship exer- 
 cises over the minds of the multitude. Now that the doctrine 
 of a future state of rewards and punishments is one, which it is 
 impossible that the great masters of pagan philosophy should in 
 reality have held, is evident from this — that they had without ex- 
 ception adopted certain metaphysical notions concerning the Di- 
 vine nature, and the mode of the soul's future existence which at 
 
46 
 
 once shut the gate on their reception of that all important 
 truth. For though the Italic and Ionic schools from the time 
 of Socrates recognised the existence of the one and Eternal 
 God, yet they stripped him of all moral attributes, left him to 
 dwell alone, far from the cares of Government, in cloudless 
 and unruffled solitude, snatched from his hand the scourge 
 and the lightnings, and held it a contradiction to suppose that 
 the Divinity could, in his calmness, kindle into resentment, 
 and an impiety, that he could, in his goodness, arm his right 
 hand to punish. Even the goodness of the Supreme Being 
 was divested of all free will ; the same destiny which forbad 
 him the trembling worship which an angry Omnipotence could 
 exact, refused him the grateful homage which voluntary benefits 
 might inspire, clothed him with kindness by the same necessity 
 that clothed the sun with light, and whilst it made him the first 
 and highest of beings, robbed him of the free-will which is the 
 privilege of the lowest. The early history of the Church paints 
 in strong colours the effect of this prejudice against the recep- 
 tion of Christianity, whilst in the efforts of the christian advo- 
 cates Arnobius and Lactantius to establish the opposite truth, 
 we see the Divinity agitated by the passions of flesh and blood, 
 and, in the strange blindness of both parties to the distinction 
 between infinite justice as a perfection of God, and selfish resent- 
 ment, the failing of a creature, we know not which most se- 
 verely to condemn, the folly which reduced the Supreme Being 
 into a machine of insensate amiability, or the impiety that 
 would attribute to him the passionate transports of a man. — 
 Again, whilst they held that the soul was immortal, they gave 
 it a past eternity as the only security for that which was to 
 come, assigned to it the incommunicable attributes of the great 
 first cause, deemed it a segment severed for a time from the 
 all-containing essence, and made it float awhile in a separated 
 form, till, the vessel being broken, the spirit mingled, like a 
 bursting bubble, with the surrounding mass, and lost sense, 
 will, and consciousness in the immensity of its parent ocean.— 
 That with opinions like these, with eyes blind-folded by her 
 own wilfulness, philosophy should attain to the conviction of a 
 
47 
 
 future state of rewards and punishments was indeed impossi- 
 ble, and it is to be regretted that christian divines, misled by a 
 certain vague and indistinct greatness which seems to accom- 
 pany the notion, should ever have admired in the blasphemous 
 doctrine of the anima mundi the wonderful efforts of a reason 
 able to cope, in its discoveries, with revelation itself. There is 
 moreover too great a disposition to defer to the authority of 
 pagan philosophy, an infirm wish to prove the reasonableness of 
 Christianity, by showing that the unassisted intellect has reach- 
 ed most of its verities, which, we must think with Warburton, 
 has done infinite harm and injustice to revelation, by attempt- 
 ing to prove its reasonableness at the expense of its necessity. 
 Sykes indeed has advocated against him the cause of philoso- 
 phy, but with the ill success which should wait on all attempts 
 to piece out the structure of Christianity from the ruins and 
 rubbish of antiquity, and pollute its pure and costly materials, 
 its marble and porphyry, with the tiles and potsherds of human 
 invention. Truth, and religious truth in particular, is obvious 
 when discovered, and so much in harmony with reason is it as to 
 appear completely within its reach, but to penetrate into its 
 recesses, that very reason, perverted rather than guided by the 
 vanities of pagan metaphysics, must be judged to have been 
 wholly incapable. Thus universal then is shown to be the con- 
 sent of mankind on this point, thus unvarying and undeviating 
 the theories of philosophy and the practice of legislation in 
 asserting the prime importance of a belief in a future state to 
 ensure the welfare, or, at least, to maintain the subordination of 
 society. This unanimous consent on the part of the legislators 
 of antiquity is with sure and certain steps traced to Egypt, the 
 common fountain of their knowledge, and from that great 
 mother of monsters and superstition flowed those principles of 
 social arrangement, which animate without exception the sys- 
 tems of the sages, who became in after times the nurslings of 
 her wisdom. From all the information which we can collect, 
 it does not appear that the physical science, which the colleges 
 of Egypt could communicate, was by any means extensive ; 
 but on the contrary that it existed, as far as it went, rather 
 
48 
 
 in distinct maxims, oral traditions, and unconnected dogmas 
 than in regular systems, or the order of inductive reason- 
 ings; it has therefore become a question in what lay the 
 wisdom of Egypt which antiquity has celebrated and in 
 which the law-giver of the Jews was so deeply initiated, 
 and "when stripped of all the mysteriousness which history and 
 poetry, reason and fancy have conspired to throw around it, 
 we must conclude with Warburton, that it was the art of legis- 
 lation and the science of government in which the spirit of its 
 boasted knowledge was concentrated. It must not be sup- 
 posed, however, as the manner of Warburton would imply, that 
 the information which could be there collected, concerning a fu- 
 ture state of reward and punishment, was at all more accurate 
 in its nature and extent than that, which the traditions and feel- 
 ings of the rest of the world, whether barbarous or civilized, 
 could supply. Its adaptation only to political purposes could 
 be studied there to greater advantage than in any other school 
 or legislation, while its moral use and boundless application to 
 the service of virtue was smothered beneath a ten-fold burthen 
 of error and superstition. Above all let it not be incautiously 
 imagined, that the kingly hierarchy of Egypt studied the poli- 
 tical science with a view to the public good ; we cannot look 
 on that gigantic fabric of superstition, the labyrinthine confu- 
 sion of its creed, its chaos of stellar idolatry, deified mortals, 
 and monster-gods, the sons and daughters of a sickly imagina- 
 tion, we cannot think of the worse than darkness with which 
 these multiplied impostures quenched the spark of natural 
 truth, without being convinced that it was the industriously 
 woven web of a designing priestcraft, the devices of an ac- 
 complished tyranny, which strove to perpetuate its power by 
 the moral and intellectual degradation of the people. Had the 
 legislators of antiquity possessed more extended views of gene- 
 ral advantage, the doctrine of a future state, inseparable as 
 they found it from the mass of mankind who had not time or 
 inclination to reason it away, offered it in connection with moral 
 duty a wide scope for his benevolent efforts, a boundless field 
 for a disinterested philanthropy. But, whatever may have 
 
49 
 
 been the case with the legislators of remote ages, the rulers at 
 once and civilizers of the world, the system pursued by the 
 higher orders of after times, was essentially selfish. Infidels 
 themselves, theists or atheists, believers in no God at all, or 
 in one who had no moral attributes, they all inculcated alike 
 the doctrine of a Providence, whose oracles they held in their 
 own hands, only as a machine of government, and rested it 
 alternately, as it served their purpose, on the sanction of im- 
 mediate rewards and punishments, or on those whose fulfilment 
 was reserved for a world to come. It was moreover a religion 
 not of individuals but of the state, and as long as a Providence 
 could so far be introduced as to aid in the administration of the 
 latter, the former were abandoned to the creed of their own 
 inclinations, a compromise, as history proves it to have been, 
 between the widest possible indulgence of every natural pas- 
 sion, and that necessity of our being which makes religious 
 belief, in some form or other, inseparable from our constitu- 
 tion. Such are the reflections suggested by Warburton's first 
 proposition, including in that division the necessity of a future 
 state of rewards and punishments to the existence of society, 
 and the testimony borne to that necessity by the practice of 
 statesmen, and the theories of philosophers. Warburton con- 
 cludes this part of his subject by a series of masterly observa- 
 tions in which he shows that the utility of the doctrine in ques- 
 tion is an evidence of its truth, that to show it to have been 
 originally introduced by the Legislator would be no evidence 
 against it, and that human nature and history conspire to prove 
 it more than probable that the pretence to inspiration, and con- 
 sequently the doctrines that follow the belief in an interposing 
 God, were really credited by those who laid claim to superna- 
 tural direction. Nothing can be more striking than Warbur- 
 ton's observations on the enthusiasm which forms so essential 
 a feature in those remarkable men, who, from time to time, 
 "have brought about political and religious revolutions, and al- 
 ternately renewed and desolated the face of the moral world. 
 The union of imposture and self-delusion, the fire of im- 
 pulse and the coldness of calculation, their mutual action and 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 re-action., the order in which they succeed each other, and the 
 different phases which in their various combinations they exhi- 
 bit to the world, are delineated with a profound knowledge of 
 human nature, and an insight into the very soul of historical 
 truth which are unparalleled by any passage of similar length 
 except perhaps the character of Cromwell, as drawn by a 
 kindred genius, the celebrated Bossuet. And, though the 
 innovator in theology would probably have been a partizan in 
 history, one almost wishes, in perusing the portraitures of 
 Vane, Fleetwood, and Lambert, that the discoverer of facts in 
 the one, could be exchanged for a mere interpreter of the 
 spirit of the other. 
 
51 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Summary of the Argument — its application to the sceptical op- 
 posers of the Divine Legation. 
 
 IT has been shown therefore that, first, the belief in a fu- 
 ture state of reward and punishment was universal; — secondly, 
 that the original founders of the ancient commonwealths ex- 
 pressly inculcated it; — thirdly, that the philosophers and poli- 
 ticians of succeeding times, endeavoured by all means in their 
 power to maintain it ; — fourthly, that as they did not believe 
 it themselves, they must have inculcated the doctrine, only be- 
 cause they were convinced of its importance. Thus much has 
 Warburton incontestibly proved, but his conclusion must be 
 modified by three considerations — that the governing orders of 
 the state deemed it, not so much necessary to the existence of 
 society generally, as to their own predominance in particular — 
 again, that the public religion of each community consisting of 
 forms, and not of doctrines, it had, so far as it was a national 
 belief, no connection whatever with individual morality — and 
 lastly, that the tendency to listen to any pretences that implied 
 the present interposition of a Providence, the instincts of mo- 
 rality, and other causes, are enough to explain the existence of 
 society, in that distracted and degraded state of it which was 
 all that antiquity knew, without the influence of a doctrine 
 which was a vague impression, hot a conviction, a principle of 
 the imagination, not a law of the conscience. And this last 
 supposition, let it be said, is the only representation of the case 
 which squares exactly with the demonstrable conclusion which 
 the Author of the Divine Legation so unhesitatingly claims. — 
 But there are other circumstances which more than counter- 
 balance these objections, objections which, after all, modify 
 rather than change the argument of Warburton. It is a belief 
 to which the records of all ages and of all countries testify, 
 
52 
 
 and, however dormant in action, has maintained its hold on 
 the human heart with a tenacity which no effort has been able 
 to unloose; it may have been powerless to prevent crime, but 
 we know that it was strong enough to raise indistinct horrors 
 in the guilty conscience; it may have been asleep in life, but it 
 awoke with all its stings in death. If in systems the end of 
 which was purely and avowedly political, it still held a place 
 as a sanction, in any system where the policy was subordinate 
 to religion, it might be expected to breathe its spirit through 
 every enactment. If in circumstances where the moral attri- 
 butes of the Divinity were not understood, it still had a dis^ 
 tinct existence, incapable of proof, yet indestructible, surely 
 in a Code where those attributes, in every act of prescribed 
 duty, asserted their reality, the attendant sanction could not 
 be wanting. Where no indulgence was given to the licenti- 
 ousness of the will, undoubtedly the only reward, which seems 
 available as a motive, must, we should expect, be inscribed in 
 characters of light. If the existence of such a system could be 
 distinctly proved, and if the character of its acknowledged 
 founder were invested with the qualities of mind and genius 
 which the office of a legislator imperiously demands, with the 
 same sanctions for his religion and commonwealth open to his 
 knowledge and his use which the rest of mankind enjoyed, 
 with greater opportunities for their ascertainment, with greater 
 necessity for their application, and yet with a total omission of 
 them all, that it would prove that the Legislator himself de- 
 pended on some supernatural aid, every one must confess, 
 and that the presence of such supernatural aid would be well- 
 nigh demonstrated, few would be hardy enough to deny. That 
 such was the case with the Mosaic law, and that the omission 
 of the doctrine proves the Divinity of that, which, unless under 
 the supposition of that Divinity, could not have existed at all, 
 is the argument of Warburton. This omission having been al- 
 ready granted by the infidel impugners of the Legation — the 
 whole strength of the foregoing argument falls on them, with- 
 out anything to break its weight. The principal defences un- 
 der which they shelter themselves are two, one peculiar to 
 
53 
 
 themselves and drawn out at length by Lord Bolingbroke, which 
 asserts that Moses himself might have been ignorant of the doc- 
 trine, and another shared by them with the orthodox assailants 
 of Warburton, and resting on the a 'priori argument that a re- 
 velation without a future state is utterly unworthy of the Su- 
 preme Power ! — When however it is allowed on all hands that 
 the mind of Moses was imbued and steeped in the very essence 
 of the Egyptian mysteries, and that he was versed in all the 
 knowledge of that extraordinary people, the stamp of whose 
 ceremonies is still left on many of his own institutions, it is in- 
 deed an extravagant assumption to imagine that he was igno- 
 rant of a doctrine which we know was not only privately held, 
 but even popularly taught. But this assertion is followed by 
 one still more extraordinary, which would make Moses scepti- 
 cal of the doctrine, even if he knew of its existence, and de- 
 terred by a conscientious regard to truth from inculcating it 
 on the Israelitish People. But the doctrine was universally 
 held in Egypt, and he must therefore have known it ; it was 
 applied as an instrument of government, and he must there- 
 fore have been acquainted with its use ; his writings display an 
 acquaintance with the moral attributes of God which remove 
 all cause for doubt, and he must therefore have believed it. 
 And even in the absence of all antecedent certainty that it 
 must have been familiar to his mind ; it may with too decisive 
 a logic be immediately deduced from the Pentateuch to allow 
 any escape to such an egregious fallacy. And in this division 
 of our subject, whilst we are instituting a comparison between 
 the sanctions of the Mosaic law and those of the Pagan legis- 
 lators, we ought not to pass unnoticed the consummate skill 
 with which Warburton has conducted this part of his state- 
 ment, nor in the astonishing power, with which, through the 
 medium of the Egyptian wisdom, he has brought them into 
 juxta-position and immediate contrast, refuse to recognize a 
 master-piece of argumentation. But the other argument still 
 remains, and Dr. Stebbing has rested too much upon it, and 
 staked too confidently the issue of the contest in its truth to 
 allow it to pass unnoticed. The essence of religion is defined 
 
54 
 
 by the Apostle to be " a belief that God is, and that he is a 
 rewarder of all them that diligently seek Him." But God 
 may surely, if he pleases, propose rewards in such a manner 
 as to shower them immediately on those who obey his pre- 
 scribed commands ; and that such an obedience would be to 
 all intents and purposes a religious obedience, and such a be- 
 lief in the Almighty, affecting the mind with the prospect of 
 immediate rew r ard and punishment, a proper religion, and wor- 
 thy of its Author, is little else than self-evident. Besides, re- 
 wards and punishments, for obedience and disobedience, dur- 
 ing the period of this limited existence, as they would not in 
 the least degree exclude the belief in another state of being, so 
 would not interfere with the correspondent sanctions of that 
 future state. Natural religion teaches from the attributes of 
 the Almighty that there must be a retribution hereafter, be- 
 cause good and evil are unequally distributed here, and that 
 there must be a life to come because Providence is partial in 
 the present one ; but, under the hypothesis of an equal admi- 
 nistration already carried on, no one will be bold enough to 
 deny that this demonstrable necessity is at an end. But this 
 mode of reasoning, in addition to its unjustifiable arrogance, is 
 in reality a petitio principii of the question at issue. Through 
 all the reasonings of this nature against the Divine Legation 
 there is either a strange blindness, or a perverse misrepresenta- 
 tion of Warburton's hypothesis which reflects equal discredit 
 on the head, and on the heart of his opponents. It is indeed 
 true, as the sceptic urges, that no revelation could be genuine, 
 which held out no hopes of compensation for inequalities here, 
 unless God should be pleased to make an equal Providence his 
 sanction ; it is true, as Dr. Stebbing asserts, that a revelation, 
 leaving, as far as this omission is concerned, the attributes of 
 its author in jeopardy, would be unworthy of the Almighty, 
 unless an equal providence vindicates them. But, such a mode 
 of supplying the defect is, from beginning to end, asserted by 
 Warburton, and to disprove the assertion, not to take its false- 
 hood for granted, is evidently the only legitimate mode of rea- 
 soning on the subject. Another egregious error into which 
 
55 
 
 Stebbing has fallen in his zeal against Warburton, has been 
 to deny that Warburton's argument, even if proved, can be 
 considered as a proper internal evidence, and then, with a 
 strange contradiction of terms and ideas he asserts that the true 
 internal evidence of the Legislation is to be derived from " the 
 presumption that Moses had the assurance and the experience 
 of an extraordinary Providence." This, in addition to other 
 errors, destroys the essential difference between external and 
 internal evidence, the latter of which means that you take 
 some notorious fact in the constitution of a religion, not in 
 dispute itself, to demonstrate the truth of some other fact sup- 
 ported by evidence, which is contested. Thus from the noto- 
 rious fact of the omission of a future state in the Mosaic law, 
 Warburton deduces its Divine Commission, the thing denied. 
 
56 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Whether the doctrine of a future state was a sanction of the 
 Mosaic Law. 
 
 THIS brings us to the ascertainment of a truth in which 
 divines and not sceptics are the opponents of Warburton's 
 theory. Now it is plain, that nothing can be called the sanc- 
 tion of a given law or institution, which the framer of that law 
 does not himself lay down, either as a reward for its observ- 
 ance, or a punishment for its neglect. There may possibly 
 indeed be other circumstances which may even powerfully con- 
 tribute as motives to free agents for obedience to the command 
 in question, but still they cannot in any truth or correctness of 
 speech be entitled sanctions. A human law for instance threat- 
 ens an offender with a personal chastisement, the execution of 
 which, if the crime be committed, will prove the power, as the 
 threat did the intention of the enacter; and the enactment alto- 
 gether shows that both parties deemed such sanction necessary, 
 even if the nature of the case itself did not demonstrate it to 
 be so. It may be that some other prospect of distant loss may 
 combine in deterring from the act in question ; it may be that 
 the distant prospect (though this from our constitution is in 
 fact impossible) may be the sole motive, and the present expec- 
 tation act not at all, but no one would in this case assert that 
 the proper sanction of the ordinance was this distant prospect, 
 to which the law has not, in the remotest degree, alluded, and 
 to which it has not appealed to show the reality of its power. 
 So that, should the belief in a future state of retribution have 
 been in force among the Jews, a question at present in abeyance, 
 and yet not held out in the remotest degree as a motive whereby 
 to enforce the Mosaic ordinances, such a belief is not a sanction 
 of the law. And on the other hand, should it be admitted that 
 there are some laws the establishment of which could not have 
 been carried into effect but by one of two methods, the absence 
 of one of those methods being proved, and, at the same time, 
 
57 
 
 the existence of the law in despite of that absence being granted, 
 the employment of the other, the sanction in debate, is de- 
 monstratively shown. An examination of the Mosaic code will 
 at once show that the omission of a future state as a sanction, 
 is really such as Warburton states it to be, and as the Deist, to 
 his own refutation, allows ; and will at the same time time tell 
 us the reason why its admission was not demanded, to the sa- 
 tisfaction of the believer. The end of the Mosaic law was to 
 preserve the knowledge of the one true God, and to prepare 
 the way and open as it were an entrance into the world, with 
 his proper credentials, to the advent of the Messiah ; the im- 
 mediate tendency of that law was to preserve the Jews, by 
 ordinances admirably fitted for that purpose, from the infection 
 of idolatry. An ordinary providence, and the instincts of a 
 future state would have been here, as in the rest of the world, 
 totally unavailing, and to antedate the sanctions of eternal life 
 had been inconsistent with God's administration, his impartiality 
 to the rest of mankind his common children, and the necessary 
 absence, as yet, of the only means and conditions on which his 
 justice and mercy could grant it. Temporal rewards and pu- 
 nishments therefore for a law which had a temporary end 
 only, and one exclusive community as its object, were essen- 
 tially necessary. That such were the sanctions, and the only 
 sanctions, on which the Jewish lawgiver rested his code, War- 
 burton was not the first, in clear and absolute terms, to assert. 
 Genius, learning, and piety, in the names of Grotius, Episcopius, 
 and Bishop Bull, had long since expressed the same opinion on 
 the subject. The same God whose out-stretched arm had 
 smitten the River-Dragon of Egypt, and rescued the sojourn- 
 ers from his gripe, who made the sea dry land before the 
 fugitives and an overwhelming ocean to their pursuers, who 
 spoke in thunder from the smoking rocks of Sinai, and led 
 them with the pillar of cloud through the wilderness, every 
 spot of which was radiant with the manifestations of the Divine 
 Presence, announces in every line his determination to vindi- 
 cate, by immediate interposition, his curses and his blessings 
 on the elected conquerers of Canaan ! Victory and prosperity, 
 all the delights that could be found in a land flowing with milk 
 
58 
 
 and honey, all the blessings that could grow from beneath the 
 footsteps of a beneficent God, who, in the tabernacle of the 
 desert, and the temple of triumphant Zion, vouchsafed to dwell 
 among men, were the chartered privileges of obedience; sorrow, 
 and bondage and scorn from below, plague and pestilence and 
 anger poured out, from above, shook their accumulated terrors 
 over the head of rebellion. Even those curses, which were to 
 extend beyond their existence as a nation, which were to cleave 
 to them after the establishment of the second covenant, and 
 even beyond the hour when the Roman Eagle had hunted out 
 its prey, convey no intimation of the sanctions of a future world 
 then announced and in force, but the threat of temporal degra- 
 dation, of an accursed and supernatural existence without king 
 or priest or temple, a wonder, a hissing, and an abomination, 
 the symbols of a branded and a reprobate race ! So complete 
 throughout is the sanction of temporal rewards and punishments 
 peculiar to the law, and so even yet do they vindicate their reality ! 
 And even Moses, who had doubtless looked on many a vision 
 of heavenly glory, and had foreseen the spiritual blessings of 
 the Messiah's kingdom, did not close his eyes on the world, 
 before, on the very eve of his translation, he had beheld from 
 the top of Pisgah the promised land, the scene of the earthly 
 promises which he had prophecied, the typical Paradise of God ! 
 There is something moreover striking and very remarkable in 
 the tone of unshrinking confidence with which the great Pro- 
 phet appeals to his hearers, as to persons whose senses had 
 been long familiarized to the tokens of an interposing deity, 
 something awful in the unequivocal and unhesitating voice in 
 which he pours forth his denunciations, the voice of one who 
 doubted not but that the elements waited upon his word, and 
 that he held in his own hand, the keys wherewith to open all 
 the store-houses of wrath ! Nor must it be omitted, that the 
 moment, when he was breathing this conscious spirit of inspi- 
 ration, was one in which nothing but madness or a genuine 
 commission from God would have promised temporal blessings, 
 or pronounced temporal maledictions. The people, to whom 
 their Prophet and Lawgiver was bidding farewell, were, like 
 the Scandinavians of Odin, and the Arabs of Mahomet, about 
 
59 
 
 to enter on an exterminating war. Yet, in the very jaws of 
 danger, when death and bloodshed, in spite of all human pre- 
 caution, are licensed to do their work, he pronounces that one 
 of the chosen race shall put a thousand to flight, whilst Odin or 
 Mahomet shrink their timid inspiration into the dim announce- 
 ment of rewards to come, and cheer the expiring warrior by 
 the stern and savage revellings of Valhalla, or the more melting 
 raptures of a voluptuous paradise. But these two last cir- 
 cumstances, though each of them a strong internal evidence of 
 the Divine Legation against the sceptic, are lines of argument 
 wholly distinct from that which is taken by Warburton, and the 
 claims to temporal sanctions and an extraordinary Providence 
 is all that he here demands, as, at once, excluding the other, 
 and carrying with it the adequate substitution. Nor is the 
 sanction of a future state omitted altogether as a sanction of 
 the law only, but in the historical narrative which counts the 
 chosen race with the antidiluvian and the primeval promises 
 of the Messiah, there is a studied silence, and a premeditated 
 reserve on this subject which is scarcely less evident than its 
 absence from the law itself. It will be enough to touch, at 
 once as proofs and examples, on the history of the fall, and the 
 translation of Enoch, the brevity, mysteriousness, and re- 
 markable obscurity of which have been commented upon at 
 length by Le Clere. Not that it is to be thought, that the 
 doctrine may not most clearly and satisfactorily be deduced from 
 the Pentateuch, nor that it was not designed to be thence col- 
 lected ; nor, that it is otherwise than impossible for a pious and 
 spiritual mind not to discover it ; nor even, that it would not 
 have been a sin in the sight of heaven not to have reached this 
 great truth. But only that it is as darkly intimated as is, in any 
 degree, consistent with those conditions and intentions, and that 
 there is a very zealous care distinctly visible throughout, lest 
 the doctrine should be perverted into a part, or a sanction, or 
 in any way or degree an effect of the legal ordinances ! How 
 reasonable this was, how consistent with the divine goodness, 
 and how necessary from the nature of the case itself it follows, 
 by a few remarks^ sufficiently to prove. 
 
60 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Future Reward and Punishment could not have been made a 
 sanction of the Mosaic Law. 
 
 IT was in truth impossible that eternal life should have been 
 an appropriate sanction of the law, and it is confessed by Dr. 
 Stebbing in the midst of his reasonings against the Divine Le- 
 gation that to teach it was not a part of the commission given 
 by God to Moses. That it was not a part, or to be found in 
 the Mosaic Law, that is, not to be discovered or distinctly 
 taught, or clearly announced in it, is the substance of War- 
 burton's second great proposition. Nor is the weight of his 
 conclusion in any way affected by the cause of the omission, 
 and to assert, as is a very favourite mode of slurring over the 
 argument, " That he did not teach it because it was not a gift of 
 the law," does not in the least render the reasoning, that would 
 draw the necessity of divine interference from the omission, 
 whatever may have been the reason that dictated it, less logical 
 or less certain. Satisfied therefore with proving the omission, 
 Warburton has not entered at so great length as he might have 
 done on the reasons which, to a believer's mind, are absolutely 
 conclusive against the possibility of making the doctrine in ques- 
 tion a sanction of the law. It is however extremely important 
 as illustrative of the genius of the former and latter dispensa- 
 tions, and an irrefragable confirmation to the opinion of War- 
 burton upon the subject. The gift of immortality, from the 
 beginning to the end of scripture, is represented in indissoluble 
 connection with the Redeemer, whose privilege it was, through 
 the meritorious sacrifice of himself, to appease the wrath of an 
 offended God, and to unbar those gates of Eden, whose en- 
 trance the flaming sword of the cherubim had forbidden to 
 fallen man. In his blood our hopes are planted, in his name 
 our faith is called, on his merits our weakness reposes, and to 
 his cross our eyes are uplifted as the emblazoned and accredited 
 
61 
 
 sign of our salvation. ' < If there could have been a law which 
 could have given eternal life," then we are assured that by the 
 law justification would have been effected ; for without that 
 justification the everlasting reward which is its result could 
 never have been effected. But for two distinct reasons, each 
 conclusive in itself, the Mosaic law was here imbecile and 
 powerless. For, in the first place, it imposed obligations, and 
 imperatively exacted duties, to the performance of which the 
 fallen nature of man was utterly inadequate; and being inade- 
 quate, it became subject to its awful penalty, and, in its help- 
 lessness to avert that fearful sanction, recognized what the 
 apostle emphatically styles, the ministration of death. — 
 Again, it was impossible that the blood of bulls and of goats, 
 which formed the body of Levitical ordinances, should take 
 away sin. Those types and shadows of a mightier offering, 
 had no efficacy in themselves, were in themselves worthless be- 
 fore the eye of heaven, and left the soul of the worshipper as 
 much stained with the taint of sin as it was before his body was 
 sprinkled with the blood of the victim. Not only did the law 
 want the efficacious title to eternal life through justification, 
 which lay in the blood of Christ, but it was even destitute of 
 the benefit of such expiation ; for St. Paul argues not, that the 
 law granted remission of sins only through the future Messiah; 
 who was the real author of the antecedent grace, but he denies 
 that the law granted remission at all. Had immortality been a 
 sanction of his law, that it would have been impossible for 
 Moses as an inspired servant of the divine counsels, to have 
 withheld the efficacious cause on which it could have rested, is 
 a fact which carries its own proof. But as so to have declared 
 it would have been utterly repugnant to the course prescribed 
 by the Eternal Wisdom, to have withdrawn the veil from the 
 dependent and co-existent truth was utterly impossible. That 
 the merits of our saviour's sacrifice extend their influence as 
 much backward to the beginning of the world, as they do for- 
 ward to the end of it, is indeed certain, — that the faith which 
 animated the patriarchs of old was faith in the promises of 
 God generally, and in that of the Messiah, specifically, as far 
 
62 
 
 as it went, is no less certain. But the fact only was at first re- 
 vealed, the race from which he was to spring, the mode in 
 which the destined triumph was to be wrought, and all the cir- 
 cumstances of the passion, its mysterious instrument, were very 
 gradually unfolded. The first announcement did indeed con- 
 tain in embryo the whole of the divine counsel, but it demanded 
 long ages to quicken the seed, to rear the stem, and to unfold 
 all the leaves, the flowers, and the fruit of the ripened dis- 
 pensation. The slightest consideration tells us that its imme- 
 diate announcement would have annihilated the beautiful and 
 gradual developement of the plan, and deprived the believer, 
 in ages to come, of all that company of witnesses, all that 
 pomp of inspiration, and all those clouds of prophecy, which 
 growing brighter and brighter at the approach of him whom 
 they foreran, drew their concentrated circle around the advent 
 of the Messiah. The world in general too was as yet unfitted 
 for the reception of the Deliverer, it was yet in its infancy, and 
 those nations were yet unborn whose power and language were 
 to form the ready instruments for the propagation of the truth. 
 The promise was to mankind in general, the advantage was to 
 the whole human race; the guardianship of the oracles of 
 God was the lot of the Jews, not for their own sake, or for 
 their own benefit, but as stewards for all their brethren, for 
 the salvation of all the sons of Adam. As moreover the pro- 
 mise of eternal life and the giving of the law would have been 
 contemporary, no care and no distinction whatever could have 
 so far separated them from an inevitable association as to pre- 
 vent results the most ruinous to the reception of the Christian 
 covenant. We know that the prejudices of the Jews in favour 
 of the Mosaic law, that the exalted ideas which they entertain- 
 ed of its sanctity, its efficacy, and its perfection, effectually 
 alienated the mass of the nation from belief in our Saviour's 
 mission, and blinded their eyes, and hardened their hearts 
 against the testimonies of miracle, doctrine, and prophecy 
 which stamped its divine reality. Now, though eternal life, 
 as we have seen, forms no sanction of the law, it was undoubt- 
 edly the popular belief of the Jews at the coming of our Sa- 
 
63 
 
 viour, and the superstitious attachment of the Jewish converts 
 to the observance of the whole of the Mosaic law, resulted 
 from their belief that the doctrine of a future state formed an 
 integral part of the Mosaic dispensation. The same likewise 
 is the creed of the modern Jews, originating from the supposed 
 perfection and eternity of their law, its all-sufficiency for sal- 
 vation, its atoning efficacy, and its earnest of everlasting life. 
 If such be the case, even when the doctrine in question does 
 not form a declared sanction of the law, in the inevitable result 
 which would have ensued had it been a sanction, we see in it- 
 self a conclusive proof that it would not have been so intro- 
 duced even had other obstacles been removed. If, where its 
 intimations are confessedly so obscure, it yet had the effect of 
 deterring the mass of the Jewish nation from the acceptance of 
 Christianity, and tainted the faith of that part of it who were 
 converted, it is obvious to mark the consequences of an open 
 annunciation and an unconcealed inculcation of that great and 
 illustrious truth. The evil would not have been confined to 
 the Jewish nation, and as the Hebrew scriptures were des- 
 tined to form a part of that rule of faith which was to descend 
 to the latest generations of mankind, it would have bequeathed 
 to them all the same fatal inheritance of error. The divine 
 unity, and distinctness of the two dispensations, would have 
 been lost, the substance and the shadow, the type and the 
 reality, would have been inextrically confounded, the spiritual 
 meaning would have struggled in vain to shake off its material 
 clothing, and justification by faith, the prime star on the fore- 
 head of Christianity, would have been supplanted by a crown, 
 formed from the false and adulterate gems of human deserv- 
 ings. The inspired writers of the New Testament have drawn 
 the line of demarcation between the temporal promises of 
 Moses, and the everlasting promises of Christ, in colours too 
 strong to admit any doubt upon the subject, even if our own 
 unassisted reason had not been sufficient to demonstrate the 
 necessity of this distinction. That life and immortality were 
 brought to light through the Gospel, that it has abolished 
 death, that the law came by Moses, grace and truth by Christ, 
 
64 
 
 that the law was only the shadow of good things to come, that 
 we have a better covenant and better promises, in the decisive, 
 uniform, and unequivocal language of the holy canon. This 
 however, inconclusive to a Jew, is at least decisive with those 
 who believe them to be parts of the same great whole, and 
 that one part of scripture therefore cannot be in variance with, 
 or in contradiction to another. The texts in the New Testa- 
 ment which bear on the temporal promises and sanctions of the 
 law have been criticised and commented on at great length by 
 Warburton with his usual ability and acuteness of exposition. 
 On the a priori part of the question he has comparatively but 
 slightly touched. But the hints which he has given have been 
 expanded and drawn out at greater length by Mr. Lancaster 
 in his harmony of the law and the Gospel and with a clearness 
 and force of reasoning not unworthy of his great predecessor, 
 and perhaps his statement has lost nothing by the absence of 
 that ardour which the vindication of a favourite theory neces- 
 sarily excites, and which, while it might have given greater 
 fire to his remarks, and vivacity to his style, might have marred 
 the calm and dispassionate tone which at present distinguishes 
 his argument. There are some remarks on the same subject 
 in Mr. Davison's work on the origin of sacrifice, conceived in 
 the usual strength of thought, and logical precision of that 
 writer which offer important illustration to the point which we 
 have just discussed. On the whole then, not only is the doc- 
 trine of a future state not made a sanction of the Mosaic law, 
 but it would have been inconsistent with its claim to inspiration 
 to have made it otherwise. It would have marred the har- 
 mony, order, and arrangement of God's counsels, and the only 
 condition on which it could have been authoritatively announc- 
 ed, would have been utterly inconsistent with the attainment 
 of other ends, and the establishment of other purposes of in- 
 finitely greater importance than the announcement of the doc- 
 trine. Nor did the withholding of this truth entail any hard- 
 ship on the Jewish nation, nor does it imply anything at vari- 
 ance with those peculiar advantages which they may be sup- 
 posed to have enjoyed as the especial people of God. It was 
 
65 
 
 in being the depositary of God's promises, the seat in which he 
 had chosen to fix his habitation, till the fulness of time should 
 spread the expanded spirit of his mercy over all the earth, 
 that they were distinguished from the rest of the world. Their 
 advantages in religious knowledge, therefore, consisted in en- 
 joying the full manifestations of God's natural attributes, his 
 unity, power, justice and goodness, unclouded and unobscured, 
 in the inheritance of those common intimations of another state 
 of reward and punishment, which had descended to all the 
 tribes of the earth, strengthened not only by immediate assurance 
 from above, but by all the support which piety and reason 
 might derive from the divine revelations, which gradually led 
 to its open proclamation, in the glorious privilege of claiming 
 the Messiah as a brother of their own line, and, lastly, in being 
 the first to gather from the lips of the incarnate God the words 
 of everlasting life ! — Warburton has said, that the doctrine of a 
 future state of reward and punishment has been generally held 
 to constitute the most essential part of the Mosaic dispensation. 
 This perhaps is not exactly true, yet that it has been esteemed 
 a very essential part of it, and that any opinion of an opposite 
 description has been branded, as though it were tainted by the 
 plague-spot of heresy, is undeniable. It is not too much to 
 say, that such an opinion proceeds on a very imperfect under- 
 standing of the genius of the two dispensations, and the 
 confused and abortive efforts which its advocates have made, 
 when put to the test, to define how or in what manner, or in 
 what degree the doctrine in question was taught, show plainly 
 enough the imbecility of a cause, erring at once against the 
 sound doctrine, and without argument to give an air of plausi- 
 bility to the false. Yet are there many and sufficient reasons 
 why pious and learned men, removed alike from bigotry and 
 fanaticism, have enrolled the debated question among the arti- 
 cles of their creed, and prejudices so many, as, in default of 
 strong judgment and accurate discrimination, amply to supply 
 their individual weakness by their collective strength. We 
 know that to God's chosen servants, under the old covenant, 
 and to the Patriarchs, before its institution, peculiar revelations 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 from above were made, and that they walked as pilgrims upon 
 earth, in the assurance of a better and a heavenly country. 
 The heresy of the Sadducees, which they founded on the omis- 
 sion of the doctrine, as a sanction of the law, is in itself suffi- 
 ciently terrifying to drive a timid mind for refuge into an op- 
 posite extreme, But there are still more prejudices than these 
 which might be mentioned, and, above all, a perverse misunder- 
 standing of the nature of a future state, as it could alone be 
 taught by natural religion, and the great and essential differ- 
 ences between such a belief and that of the Christian Scrip- 
 tures, which has powerfully contributed to establish a mis- 
 apprehension of the fact. 
 
67 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Whether the omission the Doctrine as a Sanction implies the 
 ignorance of it amorig the Jewish People. 
 
 HAD Warburton confined his theory to the absence of 
 the doctrine of a future state of reward and punishment 
 as a sanction, — it would have rested on proofs which may 
 be considered irrefragable. But the ardour of his imagination, 
 the natural wish which urges all theorists to make their hypo- 
 thesis round and perfect throughout, and perhaps a misgiving 
 that his theory would not be demonstrable without it, joined to 
 the temptation of a bold and original paradox, has induced him 
 to pronounce, that from the giving of the Law to the captivity, 
 the Jews had not even the same intimations of a future state, 
 or the same belief in it, which the rest of the world, without 
 any exception, enjoyed. This proposition seems at first sight 
 to involve many assertions of a peculiar and heterodox de- 
 scription, and to be surrounded, in its developement, by 
 rocks and quicksands too numerous for the most accomplished 
 pilot to escape. But the time included in the proposition must 
 have considerable abatements, and Warburton, who is by no 
 means consistent with himself on the subject, seems, in other 
 places, desirous of confining it between the giving of the Law 
 and the days of David. Within this period, during which the 
 extraordinary Providence is confest to have been in its fullest 
 action, if that Providence be granted to have been an equal 
 one, it is undoubtedly least objectionable, and in any case, or 
 in any view of the question, the ignorance of the doctrine is to 
 be confined to the mass of the people. And as the question is 
 cleared by Warburton himself of all interference with the 
 patriarchal faith, the belief of Moses himself, or even with the 
 effect produced by the approximation of the two covenants, 
 when the aspect of the Law was transfigured by its communing 
 with the glories of Christianity, it is confined within a compa- 
 
68 
 
 ratively narrow and unimportant compass. Important, indeed, 
 only in one respect, so far, namely, as concerns the means, which 
 Warburton has employed, to elicit from the silence or equivocal 
 declarations of Holy Writ an absolute confirmation to his opi- 
 nion. The mass of mankind must have acquired the doctrine 
 by one of two means, either by their own reason, or tradition 
 handed down from the primitive race. Let it be granted, for 
 the sake of argument, that they had reached it through the 
 efforts of their own reason. The method by which they would 
 have inferred the fact of another existence, would be the con- 
 trast between the necessary attributes of God, and the inequa- 
 lities of Providence in this present state ; from the comparison 
 of which would have resulted the conclusion, that the vindica- 
 tion of the Almighty's unchangeable justice and goodness de- 
 manded a future state of being, wherein to demonstrate their 
 perfection. But as Warburton asserts an equal Providence, and 
 uses the words equal and extraordinary as perfectly synonimous, 
 the people, who lived under its constant administration, would be 
 debarred from that evidence of another state of existence which 
 has just been mentioned, and, the perfect distribution of good 
 and evil being already made, the satisfied mind would look no 
 farther. Mr. Lancaster has argued the matter, however, at great 
 length, and has most satisfactorily shown, that the two terms in 
 question are far from meaning the same thing, and that Scrip- 
 ture affords us no warrant for the existence of that equal dis- 
 tribution of good and evil, for which Warburton so vehemently 
 contends. Indeed, that writer himself does not assume that 
 confident tone on the subject, which is in most cases character- 
 istic of his assertions, but has something deprecatory of a strict 
 interpretation, which displays a consciousness of weakness. — 
 Yet nothing but the most exact interpretation, and the most 
 literal acceptation of the terms is sufficient for his argument, 
 and whilst the least opening remains for the ordinary inequa- 
 lities of Providence, his conclusion falls inevitably to the ground. 
 Had the obedience of the Jewish people, indeed, to the ordi- 
 nances of the Almighty been more perfect, the universal pros- 
 perity which would have resulted from such obedience, and 
 
69 
 
 the covenanted blessings which, without bound or measure, 
 would have crowned the temporal condition of the chosen race, 
 and made the rocks of Canaan an earthly Paradise, would, by 
 removing all inequality, have nearly brought about the result, 
 which Warburton has taken for granted. But so far is this 
 from being the case, that the annals of that extraordinary people 
 are written in darkness and in blood. — On the one hand, we see a 
 hard-hearted and rebellious race, dead to the incessant miracles 
 among which they lived, heaping crime on crime, and idolatry 
 on idolatry; and on the other, a wrathful and alienated God, 
 stretching out his right hand to plague and to avenge, and speak- 
 ing, not with the still small voice of mercy, but with the thunder- 
 ings of outraged and indignant majesty; judgment treads on 
 the heels of judgment, war on pestilence, slavery on war, till, 
 scourged by the visitations of heaven into an acknowledgment 
 of their guilt, the chosen race bowed too late to the Divinity of 
 their Law, clung with desperate fondness to the ruins of a dis- 
 pensation, which had gained its purpose by the vengeance it 
 had entailed upon them, and, as luckless in their intended obe- 
 dience as in their perverse rebellion, hurled a second time 
 defiance at the Almighty, by the rejection and persecution of 
 the covenant of life. Now it was the peculiar genius of the 
 Jewish Law, that it involved the innocent in unavoidable ruin 
 with the guilty, and the mouth of God himself entailed the 
 punishment of the fathers on the children, and made his curse, 
 as well as his blessing, descend to the third and fourth genera- 
 tion. The operation, therefore, of the sanctions of the law pre- 
 sented more signal and striking examples of inequality, in the 
 distributions of Providence, to the eyes of an Hebrew, than the 
 ordinary course of human events could have offered to the rest 
 of the world. For the vengeance instantly descended on the 
 offence, and as such offence, though the act of an individual, 
 was permitted to extend its fatal consequences far and wide, as 
 a public sin, the angry visitation invariably involved a fearful 
 number of the innocent in its sweep. When the earth opened 
 to swallow up Corah and his company, it joined their wives 
 and children in the same tomb; the transgression of Achan fell 
 
70 
 
 on the innocent camp, and the sin of David called down the 
 destroying Angel on his unoffending people. The reasoning, 
 therefore, in this case, which would lead to the doctrine of ano- 
 ther world, where these contradictions would be solved, and 
 this antithesis to God's goodness reconciled with its opposite, 
 is direct and unavoidable. For it is wholly unincumbered by 
 any of those doubts and misgivings, which must have sprung 
 from an imperfect apprehension of the moral attributes of God, 
 and which would effectually prevent the mind of a heathen 
 from arriving, with certainty, at such a conclusion. The ap- 
 parent injustice of such an enactment, as that which visits on 
 the child the transgression of the father, would be instantly 
 removed by the belief in a future state ; and those murmurs, 
 which Ezekiel records against the inequality of God's dispen- 
 sations, appear rather to mark the first dawn of Atheistical 
 principles among the Jews, than the previous absence of the 
 belief in question, as Warburton would interpret them to mean, 
 and seem utterly inconsistent with the notion, that from thence 
 is to be dated the period, when the general faith in a future 
 state began to gain ground among them. Warburton again has 
 urged the law, which involves the child in the guilt of its parent, 
 as another strong proof of the temporal sanctions of the Mosaic 
 dispensation, and as a farther means to supply the absence of a 
 future state by an appeal to the natural passions, and this appa- 
 rently with considerable reason. That it was one of the striking 
 and separating differences in the provisions of the two covenants, 
 that it did really exist in the first, and was repealed in the 
 second, is proved, beyond controversy, by the declarations of 
 Jeremiah and Ezekiel. This variance, between Moses and the 
 later prophets, has been urged strongly and confidently against 
 them by Collins and Spinoza ; and there have been Christian 
 Divines, who, in the heat of their resentment against Warbur- 
 ton, have overlooked at once the discrepancy and its solution, 
 and have asserted that, in this respect, the Christian and the 
 Mosaic dispensations did not recognize any distinction of sanc- 
 tions whatever. But this is the very madness of controversy ; 
 and it was reserved for Doctor Rutherworth to hazard the ex- 
 
71 
 
 traordinary assertion, that temporal rewards were promised in 
 quite as great a degree in the Gospel as in the Law — an assertion 
 at least as remarkable for its incredible repugnance to truth, as 
 the temerity which could unequivocally urge it against the 
 Author of the Divine Legation. It is plain, however, that the 
 extraordinary distribution of reward and punishment did not 
 exclude great and manifest inequality ; and to have carried it 
 into effect, in that perfect and consistent manner, which is alone 
 compatible with the divine intention to have done so at all; to 
 have discriminated, not only between the good and the bad, 
 but between the innumerable shades and minute differences 
 which unite the two extremes, and to have apportioned to each 
 his just and appropriate reward, offer difficulties too innumera- 
 ble, and contradictions too irreconcileable,to exist without a total 
 change in the system of divine administration. Now the differ- 
 ence between the Jewish Nation and the rest of the world con- 
 sisted, not in an exemption from those invariable laws, and that 
 admixture of good and evil, to which all in a greater or less degree 
 are subject. But it lay in this, that the post of Legislator and 
 King was occupied by God himself, and the rewards and pu- 
 nishments, which were the sanction of his law, carried into ef- 
 fect by the immediate interposition of his own hand. But he 
 dealt with the Jews, as ordinary Legislators do with their sub- 
 jects, with wisdom, the same in kind, but differing in degree. 
 He drew them " with the cords of a man," acted upon them 
 by the same motives and the same passions, his laws wqi'e ge- 
 neral like theirs, often unavoidably involved the innocent with 
 the guilty, and only so far preserved an equality of distribu- 
 tion, as his own unchangeable constitution of things permitted, 
 infinitely farther, indeed, than mere human wisdom could have 
 done, but still with an evident and observable imperfection. — 
 But even were it granted, that the Jews enjoyed a perfectly 
 equal Providence, themselves, yet they had too much intercourse 
 with the surrounding nations to be ignorant, that they at least 
 were living under an unequal dispensation, and, as their own 
 scriptures taught them, that Jehovah was, not a mere Titelary 
 Diety, but the God of heaven and earth, they must still have 
 
72 
 
 felt the necessity of a future state. Even had their view been 
 confined to their own little world, had they possessed to the 
 full the promised blessings, and, consequently, as their only 
 condition, maintained unbroken their allegiance to God, the 
 imperfections of our nature, its infinite instincts, its unbounded 
 capacities, the sentence of death united with the promise of the 
 Messiah, must have led them to the same conclusion. It fol- 
 lows, therefore, that, if the rest of the world could have them- 
 selves reached the doctrine, the Jews, who had the same 
 contradictions before their eyes, and infinitely greater advan- 
 tages to lead them, without difficulty, to the truth, could not in 
 possibility have been ignorant of it. But we need not have 
 reasoned upon this supposition — for the fact is, that the soul's 
 immortality, and a state of future reward and punishment, was 
 not the discovery of the human intellect, and the mind of man 
 was too weak for the undertaking. And yet there is but one 
 alternative. For either Tradition, as has been more than once 
 observed, received the doctrines from our first Parents, and be- 
 queathed them to succeeding generations, till the legendary 
 story, taking root and quickening in the ineffaceable instincts of 
 every bosom of every nation, caused altars to smoke, temples to 
 stand, and worshippers to tremble, wherever the sun rises or sets j 
 or else the human intellect, by the exertion of its own energies, 
 first penetrated to the great^Cause, and then, by the contemp- 
 lation of its relations with our own state and the present order 
 of things, scattered the darkness that is settled over them, read, 
 with prophetic reason, the mighty enigma, and triumphed in 
 the ascertainment of its future destinies. But if the voice of An- 
 tiquity be a competent witness on the question, its faith was 
 wholly traditionary, its creed had descended from father to son, 
 and it was not till a very late period, comparatively speaking, 
 that Pherecydes attempted to rest the immortality of the soul 
 on the ground of speculative reasoning. To the mass of man- 
 kind such an inquiry had been impertinent ; the instincts and 
 the passion of faith, not the calculations of belief, to reason as 
 they feel, not to feel as they reason, was and ever will be the 
 lot of the majority of the human race, and to them therefore 
 
73 
 
 the speculations of philosophy, on a subject already decided 
 upon different grounds, and of which the very existence of 
 such speculations confessed the belief, would be either unin- 
 telligible, or, if understood, would weigh with them but as 
 dust in the great balance. But subtler understandings were not 
 to be so satisfied, and Philosophy was weak, where Nature was 
 strong ; she became entangled in her own sophistries, resting 
 her wisdom on the chicane of words, she reached not the rea- 
 lity of things ; playing on the surface, she failed where depths 
 were to be sounded ; in the coldness of her vanity, she had not 
 the enthusiasm for moral truth ; she prophaned the noblest of 
 human sentiments by her feeble aid ; and in the attempt to de- 
 monstrate the immortality of the soul, Plato, the sublimest of her 
 Sons, has reared the monument of her folly. Indeed, if we wished 
 to show the inadequacy of the unaided intellect to the task in ques- 
 tion, we would bid the mind, that is sceptical on the point, to pe- 
 ruse the Phaedon of Plato. In spite of the witchcraft of that 
 exquisite composition, its deep interest, and its inimitable graces 
 of thought and expression, we must confess, in the contemptible 
 metaphysics and puerile argumentation of the sublimest of Pagan 
 Philosophers, the powerlessness of that reason, of which He may 
 be considered the embodied representative. Whether reason, 
 under other circumstances, and a different direction of its powers, 
 easily definable by our own superior Jight, might not have demon- 
 strated the doctrine, is a question wholly irrelevant to the dis- 
 cussion. Certain it is that it did not, and no less certain is it, 
 that, in the direction of proof which it had chosen, and to which 
 the peculiar genius of ancient philosophy inextricably confined 
 it, it could not have met with a different result. The schools of 
 Antiquity numbered not, among their disciples, any contempla- 
 tive Philosopher, any moralizing Sage, who, like our own Ad- 
 dison, could build a better system on the unbounded faculties, 
 the mysterious cravings, and indistinct graspings at another 
 existence, which mark the Godlike, though fallen, spirit of man. 
 By this line of reasoning, they might not only have confirmed 
 the natural belief of mankind, but have fortified it with a mo- 
 ral demonstration ; but they overlooked these attributes of their 
 
74 
 
 nature, and blinded themselves in that darkness of metaphysics, 
 wherein were engendered those errors, the very abortions of rea- 
 son, which made impossible the proof of immortality, or connected 
 its belief with a train of impieties, which rendered scepticism 
 itself comparatively innocent ! The doctrines in debate, there- 
 fore, were not the discovery of reason, but were originally the gift 
 of God himself, and dispersed, by succeeding tradition, through- 
 out the world. The early dispensations of Providence too had an 
 especial view to this belief; the blood of Abel from the ground, 
 the voice of translated Enoch from above, weretrumpet-tongued, 
 in attestation of its truth, to the antediluvian world ; the fiery 
 ascension of Elijah in after days, and the connection between 
 the promise of the Messiah, and the removal of the primeval 
 curse, all these, and more than these, not severed into uncon- 
 nected fragments, not floating in the mists of tradition, but ga- 
 thered, condensed, and harmonized, hour after hour^rung 
 into the ears of the chosen people, and aided by the mani- 
 festation and revealed attributes of a present God, must have 
 stamped indelibly, on the popular creed of the Israelites, 
 the belief in a future state. That part of Mr. Lancaster's book, 
 in which he has treated this question, is, perhaps, in the learn- 
 ing which it displays, and the argument it employs, the most 
 elaborate part of his work. He has, beyond question, shown, 
 that Warburton has erred, and even dangerously erred, in his 
 unjustifiable tampering with scripture, in this part of the Di- 
 vine Legation. It may, perhaps, be invidious to remark on in- 
 considerable blemishes, amidst so much merit; yet one can 
 hardly help noticing a secret and scarce defined disposition to 
 paradox, which he has caught from the study of his great mas- 
 ter. This amounts to a degree of weakness, when he would 
 insist, even in the remotest degree, on the constant apparition 
 of spirits, as a mode of revealing another state to the antedilu- 
 vian race, and certainly to unsoundness of reasoning, when he 
 would argue, that the human mind, though it could of itself 
 form an idea of future punishment, yet could not originate the 
 notion of future reward, because it could not have known the 
 true grounds on which alone it could be accorded to mankind. 
 
75 
 
 His reasoning is powerful enough without such assistance, and 
 in a cause so strong, it had been better to have called in no feeble 
 or equivocal aid. It is such books after all, as Mr. Lancaster's, 
 that enlarge our conceptions of the Divine Legation, the lite- 
 rary Coliseum, out of whose materials so many noble structures 
 have been built. For when we have deducted all the learning 
 which he has derived from that repository, and the numerous 
 hints which he has only expanded, the quantity of original 
 thought and composition, which remains behind, is not incon- 
 siderably diminished, yet enough still is left to render "the Har- 
 mony between the Law and the Gospel" valuable to all, who can 
 estimate sound erudition, strong judgment, acute reasoning, 
 and unaffected piety; and as it becomes better known, it will 
 probably hold the first rank among the efforts that have been 
 made to elucidate the Warburtonian controversy, and settle the 
 limits of the question ! 
 
76 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Tenth book of the Divine Legation — the subject of primitive sa- 
 crifice. 
 
 THE Divine Legation is an imperfect work, and of the se- 
 venth and eighth books, we have nothing more than a few frag- 
 ments remaining, the sketches of a master hand, the comple- 
 tion of which, sorrow, infirmities, and the spiritlessness of a 
 desponding old age denied to its author and to the world. The 
 tenth and last book, however, was nearly completed by Warbur- 
 ton, and is pronounced by Hurd, to be the most successful ef- 
 fort ever made by the human mind, to give a rationale of Chris- 
 tianity. We would not be in the number of those, who would 
 shelter their own imbecility, under an affected horror of novel 
 exposition, nor silence inquiry, by branding it as experiment in 
 religion; we would not found our belief in a doctrine, as some 
 have boasted, in its impossibility, nor go so far as to say, that a 
 religion, without mysteries, were as worthless, as a temple with- 
 out a god; yet it must be confessed, that there is so much dan- 
 ger lest we receive the rebuke of the Prophet, ' ' that it is holy 
 ground," that even a satisfactory and intelligible exposition of 
 the mysteries of our faith were less pleasing to Christian humi- 
 lity than, like the Seraphim, to veil its face before the Throne, 
 and tremble in silent adoration. Warburton, perhaps, has achiev- 
 ed as much, as any human intellect could be expected to do, in so 
 unequal a task; but so much hypothesis is mingled with theexpo- 
 sition, such large demands are made upon our understanding, 
 in its very conditions, and we are introduced into so much that 
 is extravagantly wild, in the supposition of a religious state of 
 our first parents, antecedently to their settlement in Paradise, 
 that we choose rather to enlarge the limits of our faith, than 
 those of our reason. Yet in one point of view, and with re- 
 ference to infidel objections, such an attempt, by such a man, is 
 not without its advantages. Arguments against Christianity, 
 
77 
 
 drawn from what we know not, may fairly be answered by sup- 
 positions in its favour derived from the same source, and that, 
 o£ which man, by his own limited faculties can imagine a pos- 
 sible solution, we may be sure with God is the result of infinite 
 wisdom, and will one day be seen by ourselves to square with 
 a better, and more extended reason than our own. In the pre- 
 sent state of religious and controversial feeling, when the ori- 
 gin of primitive sacrifice has called forth so many combatants, 
 on both sides of the question, the most interesting portion of 
 the ninth book of the Divine Legation is that, which contains 
 the hypothesis of Warburton upon the subject. It is full, con- 
 sistent, and complete, as the ardour of the Theorist would lead 
 us to anticipate ; as boldly urged, as the confidence of the Dog- 
 matist would prescribe ; and, though shortly stated, as power- 
 fully delineated, as the strength and eloquence of the Advocate 
 would demand. He thinks that human feelings might have 
 suggested the rite, that human reason might then have ap- 
 proved it, and that human ingenuity is still more than enough 
 satisfactorily to explain it. In the imperfection of the primi- 
 tive tongue he seeks for the key of the mystery ; and from the 
 inability of the early worshippers to unfold their feelings in 
 words, and the ardour of natural passion delighting in gestures 
 and external signs, he sees in sacrifice only a scenic language, 
 a symbolic liturgy, to which he has affixed such an interpreta- 
 tion, as seemed to him most favourable to the human original of 
 the custom. To this opinion he has stated no modifications, he 
 has made no exceptions, but refers all sacrifices alike, of every 
 description, whether eucharistic, deprecatory or atoning, to 
 the invention of man. This is not the only occasion, on which 
 Warburton has called in the nature of the early language to 
 assist him in the interpretation of Scripture meanings, and the 
 solution of Scripture difficulties. Feeling rather than thinking, 
 seeking to communicate rather sentiments in the mass, than 
 ideas in detail, nations in the first stages of their existence ex- 
 pressed rather than spoke, and with gestures in conversation, 
 pictures in writing, and symbolic representations in both, 
 sought, in the vivid and general and unequivocal language of 
 
78 
 
 nature, to supply the absence of conventional signs. The ad- 
 mirable success of Warburton, in applying this key to the solu- 
 tion of hieroglyphical language, and the success with which he 
 has traced in coincident lines, the history of speech and writ- 
 ing, has been already observed. If, therefore, elated by the 
 triumphant application of this test in other cases, he has been 
 hurried too far in his explanation of Abraham's sacrifice, as 
 seems probable, or in sacrifice generally, as seems certain, 
 there is little room for wonder, and none for severe animad- 
 version. There is something in the rite of sacrifice itself, in 
 the universality of the custom, in this bleeding proof of a san- 
 guinary or an offended Deity, something in the undoubting re- 
 ception of a practice, in its symbolical sense a mystery to the 
 believer, in its actual infliction, a discord to the feelings of the 
 man, and in both, a stumbling-block to the sceptic, which, 
 even as a matter of curious inquiry, is a most interesting fea- 
 ture in the religious history of the world. Accompanied, from 
 its first mention in Holy Writ, by the most decisive proofs of 
 the divine approbation, as a mode of worship, instituted by Je- 
 hovah himself, as the very essence of the Mosaic Covenant, the 
 chief symbol in that ritual of shadows, and, in the stupendous 
 reality of a bleeding God, the beginning, middle, and end of 
 the Christian Faith, sacrifice undoubtedly at Jirst sight comes 
 home to our feelings, as an institution necessarily of divine ori- 
 ginal. Yet there have not been wanting both pious and emi- 
 nent theologians, at all periods, who have advocated its human 
 institution, and, despite of religious warmth, and controver- 
 sial acrimony, an opinion held by the majority of the Christian 
 fathers, can be hardly charged with novelty, or a judgment 
 from such men as Spencer, Warburton, and Davison, be ar- 
 raigned of absurdity. Were we, moreover, to judge of the me- 
 rits of the question, by the tone assumed by the writers, on each 
 side of the dispute, we should not hesitate, for an instant, in sid- 
 ing with the argument for its human institution. For, what- 
 ever be the judgment delivered on the question itself, there 
 can be but one opinion on the calm, temperate, and truly 
 Christian spirit, which breathes through the remarks of Mr. 
 
79 
 
 Benson and Mr. Davison on the subject ; whilst in the other 
 party, and particularly in a late publication of Mr. Moles- 
 worth, there is a temerity of assertion and a fulness of contro- 
 versial spirit, which savours more of bigotry, startled in its 
 hiding-place, than Christian feeling anxious for the truth, of a 
 fiery partizan, rather than a disinterested inquirer. On one 
 only supposition could zeal justly kindle into an indignant 
 tone — on the supposition, namely, that the human origin of the 
 rite necessarily implied that sacrifice had always an atoning in- 
 tention, and that this intention referred the discovery of the 
 Messiah's future sacrifice to the efforts of human reason. Such 
 has generally been the supposed connexion between the two 
 propositions, that the advocates for its divine original have 
 taken it for granted, and indeed, were the human discovery 
 of that mystery really included in the other fact, no dispassion- 
 ate inquirer could hesitate in his decision. But here it may be 
 well to observe, that, at least, a great proportion of the support- 
 ers of its divine institution have loosened the ground under 
 their own feet, and, by pressing the matter too far, have ren- 
 dered it very possible, that the rite may have had an atoning 
 meaning, been humanly ordained, and yet wholly exclude the 
 alledged impiety. It has been the fashion in theology, and par- 
 ticularly among those, who advocate the divine original of sa- 
 crifices, to enlarge, certainly beyond the information of the 
 written word, the bounds of the primitive faith, and to accu- 
 mulate doctrine on doctrine, revelation on revelation, till, as 
 Mr. Molesworth unequivocally states, all gradation in the di- 
 vine scheme is destroyed, and at least as much becomes known 
 immediately after the fall, as when the fulness of time was 
 come. Let us suppose then, which, on such principles, is no 
 extravagant assumption, that our first parents, and from them 
 their children, had been divinely informed of the manner in 
 which the victory over the serpent was to be achieved, and all 
 difficulty is at an end. The knowledge of the Saviour's sacri- 
 fice institutes an immediate connexion between the typical and 
 real offering, a connexion, striking, easy, and most obvious to 
 reason; and the constitution of such a rite by man, becomes at 
 
80 
 
 once a striking symbol of his contrition, his humiliation, and 
 his faith. It has been reasoned, however, that man had no 
 right, without God's permission, over the life of his creatures, 
 and that it had been a sin, therefore, without such warrant, to 
 have taken it from unoffending beings. That it was justifi- 
 able, however, the very permission proves ; and when we consi- 
 der the large terms of the chartered dominion, over the lower 
 animals, conferred on man ; when we consider that their blood 
 had been already shed by the Divine Authority, in order 
 to furnish clothing, that we do not even know that the num- 
 ber sacrificed was greater than what the mere clothing might 
 demand, it is somewhat hazardous to assert, that reason might 
 not have discovered, that what was right, in one case, was 
 justifiable in another, and that what was innocent, for the ser- 
 vice of man, was not unlawful for the worship of God. Be- 
 sides, in what has been said on this part of the subject, there is 
 sickly sentimentality;, a coxcombry of humanity, which is as 
 displeasing to true feeling, as it is affected, in the eye of true 
 reason. Much too has been said, and with no little confidence, on 
 the impiety of will-worship, which has been argued against 
 the possible acceptability of such an offering as that of a sacri- 
 ficed victim, in the sight of the Almighty. But if there is a 
 connection, in the natural constitution of things, between cer- 
 tain outward forms, and certain inward feelings and relations, 
 and some of those connections, with their feelings, are quite 
 within the reach of our own reason ; if, moreover, God gives 
 not supernatural information except where reason, his un- 
 doubted voice, as far as it goes, is too weak to guide us ; if to 
 neglect such information of our understandings would be as 
 guilty, in the eye of Heaven, as to act upon such suggestion, 
 with humility and faith, would be meritorious ; if, moreover, 
 by the data on which we have been proceeding, the rite and 
 meaning, in the present instance, are so connected as they have 
 been stated to be, we can easily see, why God might approve 
 that which, through the medium of his implanted monitor, He 
 may himself be said to have ordained. But let us quit this 
 line of argument, and take the question under that point of 
 
81 
 
 view, in which its advocates and opponents have themselves 
 placed it. Mr. Davison has devoted no inconsiderable part of 
 his elaborate work to the purpose of showing, that primitive 
 sacrifice, as far as we judge from the existing evidence, did 
 not include the notion of atonement ; and that as there were 
 confessedly sacrifices of other descriptions, which might there' 
 fore in the present case have-Jbeen used, and those sacrifices 
 sanctioned by God's appros*A, and therefore acceptable in his 
 sight, the primitive sacrifices, as far as we can discriminate 
 their distinctive character, might have belonged, and did really 
 belong, to other classes, than that of atoning offerings. Two 
 questions here present themselves — 1. Could it in any, than that 
 of an atoning sense, have recommended itself to natural reason, 
 as an appropriate mode of worship ? — 2. Was that reason justi- 
 fied in so doing, unauthorised and uncommanded ? — In regard 
 to the second difficulty, since the unjustifiable nature of the 
 rite could only have lain in the act of slaying the animal, and 
 in the appearance of will-worship, it may be considered, in 
 some degree, already answered. Particularly when we reflect, 
 that all reasoning against the human origin of sacrifice, found- 
 ed on the charge of will- worship, applies with equal strength to 
 prayer, fasting, and all humanly instituted forms of worship 
 without exception, however reconcileable with reason and with 
 piety they may be ; and that such arguments, therefore, carry 
 with them the conviction of their own absurdity, and in prov- 
 ing too much, prove, in reality, nothing at all. In regard to the 
 first and only remaining question, Mr. Davison has eloquently 
 stated his own case, and interpretated the scenic liturgy, into 
 what he thinks a most strong and rational representation of the 
 worshipper's humility and his penitence, and his consciousness 
 of deserving that death, the sentence of which still rung, like 
 a knell, in the ears of the exiles from Paradise ! Mr. Benson 
 sees in an acknowledgment of the blessing, which God had be- 
 stowed in the shape of raiment, an adequate explanation of the 
 rite, and a reasonable motive for building an altar for sacrifice. 
 Whatever may be thought of the plausibility of the latter ex- 
 position, it shows, at all events, most satisfactorily, that there is 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 •more than one point of view, in which Sacrifice recommends it- 
 self, as a reasonable and intelligible service, to minds and in- 
 tellects of no ordinary piety to feel, and no vulgar capacity to 
 judge. And here, in truth, the question rests, and must rest 
 for ever- — for whilst one party sees sufficient reason in this 
 method of institution, the other vehemently retorts its unrea- 
 sonableness. As it here, therefore, becomes a matter of personal 
 feeling, and nothing, but the peculiar intellectual constitution 
 of each individual, can determine a preference, it is utterly im- 
 possible to decide the dispute; and as both parties must reason 
 with an utter discrepancy in their very first principles, they 
 may of course debate for ever without coming to a satisfactory 
 conclusion, and much acrimony will be displayed, where acri- 
 mony ought to have no part, and much ingenious argument 
 wasted, where argument can be of little avail. The scriptural 
 authority, which can be brought to bear upon the question, is 
 too evenly balanced, to permit either party to rely much upon 
 it ; and Mr. Davison has done much in confining it within its 
 proper limits, and thus considerably narrowing the grounds of 
 debate. As to its first institution, the voice of scripture is ab- 
 solutely dumb ; and when we consider the mention which is 
 made of the sabbath, the at least equal importance of the sub- 
 ject of sacrifice, and yet the total silence of holy writ upon it 
 the few words in which the information might have been con- 
 veyed, and how naturally it might have been introduced, the 
 silence is, most undoubtedly, as far as such a circumstance goes, 
 against its Divine Original. Certainly, no fair or plausible rea- 
 son has yet been assigned for its omission, under such circum- 
 stances ; unless we admit Mr. Molesworth's extravagant as- 
 sumption, that its absence from holy writ proves it to be self- 
 evident, and that the opponents of its Divine institution are 
 bound by the rules of reasoning, to quote God's own words 
 for its human institution. It has not been sufficiently observed, 
 however, that if sacrifice was ordained by God, it had, whe- 
 ther that sense was revealed or not, an atoning meaning; that 
 it consequently becomes a splendid prophecy; and, if so, much 
 too important in its connection with the promise of the 
 
83 
 
 Messiah, too strong to interpret the cotemporary prediction, too 
 striking in its twin-like and parallel existence, too powerful to 
 show, that the course of revelation was not so gradual, as the 
 rest of scripture proves it to have been, to allow its omission 
 in the records of the antediluvian faith. The Almighty, as 
 far as we can discover, seems not to have so precipitated the 
 current of his counsels ; and it is no disparagement to infinite 
 goodness, to have left the first promise of the Deliverer to be 
 the mysterious, but still certain object of indefinite faith, till the 
 altar of his covenant was prepared for the great prophetic sym- 
 bol, and a Priesthood hallowed to sprinkle it with the figura- 
 tive shedding of the Redeemer's blood. Nor does the transfer 
 of a rite which, if humanly instituted, was divinely approved, 
 into an especial ritual, at all affect the dignity of an ordinance, 
 the connection between which and the thing represented was 
 the result of God's own constituted laws. And when it is added 
 that, on this transfer, a new and mysterious meaning was af- 
 fixed to it, unknown before ; that it became the awful type of 
 types; and that the atoning efficacy of blood is then, for the first 
 time, announced, announced from Heaven and else indiscover- 
 able by man, the edge of any objection, on this score, is consi- 
 derably blunted. To speak, therefore, of the Advocates of its 
 human institution, as of persons who represent God as stealing 
 the inventions of man, is a polemic artifice, unworthy of the 
 candour of Christians on one hand, and the fairness of ho- 
 nourable disputants on the other. The reasonings, which 
 would fain elicit scriptural authority from the disputed text in 
 Genesis, and much that has been said, on the celebrated chap- 
 ter in the Hebrews, are really nothing more than a Petitio 
 Principii, and so far is either the one or the other from proving 
 the point in debate, that it is only by taking the point for 
 granted, that they have been so interpreted. One reflection 
 on the question is sufficiently obvious, that, whilst we cannot 
 deny that there may have been good reasons for the omission of 
 the Divine institution (if such were the case) which we know 
 not of, we do know, that the fact of that omission may permit 
 a difference of opinion without reflecting ought on the heart of 
 
84 
 
 the believer, or the understanding of the man. And at a 
 moment, when the Unitarian heresy strikes so boldly at the 
 very root of our faith, and tramples under foot the Cross of 
 the Christian Sacrifice, any thing which can sow dissention in 
 the ranks of orthodoxy, by idly traducing its best defenders, 
 or exaggerating unimportant differences into the watch- words 
 of party, is to be deprecated with a view to policy ; anything 
 that wantonly increases the mystery, or heightens the natural 
 unreasonableness of the doctrine of Atonement, is to be avoided 
 with a view to argument ; and anything, which overstrains 
 scriptural proof, or grounds doctrine on aught but scriptural 
 authority, to be shunned with a view to our faith, which it may 
 taint, and to the integrity of its defence, which it will undoubt- 
 edly destroy. 
 
 J. Garbett, 
 
 Brasen-Nose, Oxford. 
 
BLACKWOOD'S 
 
 EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. 
 
 No XLV. 
 
 DEC 
 
 SCE^IBER 1820. 
 
 Vol. VIII. 
 
 ON THE LITERARY CHARACTERS OF BISHOP WARBURTON AND DR JOHNSON. 
 
 The two greatest men of the last cen- 
 tury in our national literature, the 
 greatest in comprehensiveness of mind 
 and variety of talent, were undoubted- 
 ly Bishop Warburton and Dr Johnson. 
 For a long period of time, they exer- 
 cised a kind of joint domination over 
 the republic of letters— a dominion 
 which, in the former, chiefly arose 
 fram the hardy and unshrinking defi- 
 ance of public opinion he exhibited, 
 backed by extraordinary intellectual 
 force and vigour ; and, in the latter, 
 had its origin in the universal awe and 
 veneration his genius and character 
 had excited. In the one, it was a tri- 
 bute which fear of an immediate con- 
 sequent castigation compelled all to 
 pay ; in the other, it was an homage 
 more voluntary, because less enforced, 
 to powers of the highest magnitude, 
 and virtue of the most unblemished 
 purity. The one, accounting dissent 
 from his favourite theories as a crime of 
 the blackest dye, punished all non- 
 conformists to the idol he had set up 
 with a most merciless measure of pains 
 and penalties; while the latter, possess- 
 ing, indeed, not less of haughtiness and 
 irritability, but more of prudence, had 
 the good sense to leave to public opi- 
 nion his justification against the at- 
 tacks of his enemies. This joint and 
 equal literary supremacy, notwith- 
 standing that it was occasionally dis- 
 turbed by frequent murmurings of 
 jealousy in the former, and growlings 
 
 of fearless opposition in the latter, 
 continued, without being shaken by 
 intestine division, till the former had 
 lost, in inanity and dotage, his great 
 mental acuteness and strength, — and 
 thus the latter had, by the departure of 
 his rival, become the sole literary po- 
 tentate of his country. Time, how- 
 ever, which as frequently consigns to 
 neglect the meritorious productions of 
 literature, as it showers down an in- 
 crease of fame on the compositions of 
 deserving genius, has long since quiet- 
 ed the bustle which the pen of War- 
 burton always excited in his lifetime ; 
 and his name, once numbered amongst 
 the mighty of the earth, has been for 
 sometime subjected to a partial if not 
 total neglect. As the Roman Catho- 
 lic church treated the bones of Wick- 
 lifFe with contumely, whom, living, 
 they could not overcome ; so the pub- 
 lic seem determined to revenge up- 
 on Warburton, when dead, the con- 
 tempt they experienced from his 
 haughtiness, and the unwillingly-paid 
 devotion which he enforced to his 
 powers when living. And in the 
 length of time which has elapsed from 
 the period of his decease to the pre- 
 sent day, many a kick has been in- 
 flicted on the dead lion by animals 
 who could not have dared to approach 
 him while capable of defending and 
 revenging himself.* Popular hostili- 
 ty, as well as private, ought, however, 
 to give place to candid examination 
 
 « Amonest these, sse one Watkins, the author of a book called Anecdotes of distin- 
 guished Characters ; who, in a note to the work, would fain persuade us that Warburton 1 
 was merely a man of great and extensive reading, without intellect, acuteness, or wit. 
 
 Vol. VIII, 2 H 
 
244 
 
 and allowance; and when exercised 
 against a deserving subject, will only, 
 in the end, reflect disgrace upon itself 
 for an unworthy exercise of power. 
 The fame of Warburton must, there- 
 fore, at length experience a renewal of 
 its brightness ; and though perhaps 
 shorn of some of its beams, will re- 
 ceive its merited due at the hands of 
 posterity. A very different effect has 
 time had over the fame of his great 
 competitor : its only influence has been 
 in showering down additional lustre 
 on the name of Samuel Johnson, and 
 giving to it that fixed and permanent 
 basis and foundation which it is only 
 for posterity to bestow. The best 
 proof which can be given of the exten- 
 sive circulation of his writings, is the 
 visible effect which they have had over 
 literature and criticism ; and the in- 
 con testible assistance they have afford- 
 ed to the great march of the human 
 mind : while the works of Warburton 
 stand unnumbered amongst the stand- 
 ard productions in theology and criti- 
 cism ; and his great work, the Divine 
 Legation, remains, to use the words of 
 Gibbon, " a monument crumbling in 
 the dust of the vigour and weakness 
 of the human mind." As there is, I 
 believe, no writing extant in which 
 the merits of these extraordinary men 
 have been made the subject of compa- 
 rative criticism, though certainly the 
 most alike in the peculiarities of their 
 mental character of any of the literary 
 worthies of their age, the most equal 
 in force of intellect and universality of 
 power, — an examination and inquiry 
 into their respective talents and cha- 
 racters may not be without its parti- 
 cular benefit. It will, at least, be of 
 use in displaying how far it is possible 
 for abilities the most splendid to se- 
 duce their possessor to extravagance 
 in the search for originality ; and how 
 transient and momentary is the fame 
 of paradoxical ingenuity, when com- 
 pared with that which rests on the 
 immobility of established truth ! 
 
 To the peculiar education of War- 
 burton, may be ascribed most of the 
 peculiarities of his character. Him- 
 self, at first, an obscure provincial at- 
 torney, undisciplined in the regular 
 course of academical study ; and re- 
 fused, when he had even risen to ce- 
 lebrity, a common academical honour; 
 owing none of the varied exuberance 
 of his knowledge to professors or pro- 
 fessorships, to universities or colleges ; 
 
 On the Literary Characters of 
 
 CDec. 
 
 he naturally cherished a secret dislike 
 to the regular disciplinarians of learn- 
 ing ; and it was, at once, his delight 
 and his pride to confound the followers 
 of the beaten path in study, by recon- 
 dite and variously sparkling erudition 
 — to oppose himself to whole cohorts 
 of the standard corps of literature, in 
 the confidence of his own individual 
 power; to strike out new paths in 
 learning, and open new vistas in know- 
 ledge, with the rapidity of an enchant- 
 er ; to demolish the old and station- 
 ary structures of theology and litera- 
 ture, and overturn them from their 
 foundations, for the purpose of erect- 
 ing his own novelties in their stead, 
 which supplied what they wanted of so- 
 lidity, by speciousness and splendour ; 
 and to daazle and astound the sup- 
 porters of established principles and 
 maxims, by combating them with a 
 force of reason, and strength of logic, 
 which was, perhaps, as unexampled 
 as it was audacious. His learning and 
 his mental powers were equally esta- 
 blished without assistance, and his 
 haughtiness loved to shew how his 
 inbred mental vigour had triumphed 
 over difficulties. From the same source 
 arose both the excellencies and defects 
 of his character. No pruning hand 
 had ever been exerted to remove the 
 excrescencies which had been genera- 
 ted in his mind, and to tame and so- 
 ber the wildness and extravagance with 
 which it was so often overshadowed. 
 Thus his intellect rose up in rough 
 and unshorn mightiness, and with it 
 the pullulating seeds of sophistical in- 
 genuity which grew with itsgrowth, and 
 strengthened with its strength, till at 
 last he became an inveterate and radi- 
 cated system-monger, and his mind a 
 repositary, where every subject in the- 
 ology, criticism, or literature, had an 
 hypothesis ready prepared for it. Nor 
 less powerful in its influence, on his 
 character, was the first reception he 
 met with in literature, — in the univer- 
 sal war, which seemed, at his first rise, 
 to be proclaimed against him. That 
 his innovating and paradoxical spirit 
 should procure him many adversaries, 
 was hardly to be doubted, but, as if 
 the hypotheses he advanced were mat- 
 ters of established belief, he resented 
 every departure from them, as a de- 
 parture from truth itself; and his 
 ungovernable haughtiness, and impa- 
 tience of contradiction, flamed out in 
 angry defiance against his opposers, 
 
1820.;] 
 
 Bishop Warburton and Dr Johnson. 
 
 and overwhelmed them with an over- 
 powering torrent of scurrility and 
 abuse, which was served by an in- 
 expugnable force of argument, and 
 strengthened by an unequalled promp- 
 titude of wit. From these primary 
 circumstances, his mind received an 
 indelible impression ; and from his 
 first advance to greatness, to his last 
 approach to imbecility, he was the 
 same, and unchanged ; the same con- 
 structor of systems, the same desperate 
 controversialist, the same dogmatical 
 decider, the same determined oppugn- 
 er of whatever authority had sanc- 
 tioned in theology, or common sense 
 established in taste. The resources 
 of his ingenuity were not exhausted 
 by time — the severity of his pen was 
 not composed by age — and Lowth, on 
 whom his last attack was made, was 
 no less fated than his first antagonist, 
 Tillard, to receive the overflowings of 
 his gall. 
 
 The character of Dr Johnson was, 
 perhaps, not less influenced by exter- 
 nal circumstances, but they had much 
 less influence on the purely intellec- 
 tual part of it. If the early difficul- 
 ties through which he struggled, in 
 conjunction with the original irrita- 
 bility of his system, gave a strong 
 tinge of morosity to his character, that 
 morosity was not communicated entire 
 and unsoftened to his writings. It 
 did not form a constituent and essen- 
 tial part of his compositions — a kind 
 of perpetual and inseparable quality of 
 the mind — nor was the same itch for 
 controversy so completely engrafted 
 into, and connected with it. He had 
 not any of that foolish knight-errant- 
 ry which leads forth its votaries to re- 
 new, in the intellectual arena, the an- 
 cient feats of personal prowess, and 
 individual strength ; and which would 
 sally forth, manfully dealing its blows 
 to the right hand and to the left, care- 
 less on whom they fell, and regardless 
 what side they injured, for no certain 
 purpose, or visible design, save to ma- 
 nifest themightinessof its ownstrength. 
 He did not vainly and ridiculoasly 
 oppose himself to the world, for he 
 well knew, that he who takes the 
 world for his opponent, is sure, in the 
 end, not to win ; and that, at last, his 
 consolation will only be that of Na- 
 thaniel Lee in the madhouse. " The 
 world thinks me mad, and I think 
 them so, but numbers have prevailed 
 over right." He did not concern him- 
 
 245 
 
 self to answer every trifling and fool- 
 ish attack which ignorance and ma- 
 lignity might make upon him, for he 
 well knew, that to do so is but to give 
 duration to objects in themselves in- 
 significant ; and which, otherwise, 
 would be speedily forgotten. The 
 only controversial compositions he has 
 left behind, are his letters to Jonas 
 Hanway ; and in these, there is such 
 a spirit of good-humoured placidity, 
 as completely to prove, that controver- 
 sial rancour formed no part of his dis- 
 position. Possessing, from his long 
 intercourse with mankind, and deep 
 insight into manners and men, much 
 more practical good sense than his 
 great rival, and entertaining a much 
 greater habitual regard for established 
 institutions, he was not so desirous 
 of leading the multitude from the 
 road they had frequented to new- 
 formed paths of his own. He had too 
 much reverence for what bore the sem- 
 blance of truth, to wish to discredit 
 its supporters ; or, by making attempts 
 to beautify its outward appearance, to 
 run the hazard of undermining its 
 foundation in the end. With an equal 
 portion of that ingenuity and novelty 
 of fancy which gives new colours to 
 every subject, and brings to every 
 theme new and unhacknied accessions 
 of mind, he had too much intellectual 
 solidity to delight in framing hypo- 
 theses which could not communicate 
 to the mind that satisfaction on which 
 he loved to repose — and without the 
 power of giving which all theories are 
 but empty triflings. He had too much 
 soundness in his taste to split into 
 systems and quarter into subtleties 
 the unchanged and unchangeable prin- 
 ciples of nature, or to convert into 
 intricate and interwoven propositions 
 the plain and unerring dictates of 
 reason. His devotion to truth was 
 too strong to suffer him to deceive 
 others — his judgment too sound to al- 
 low him to be deceived himself — 
 whether the deceit was introduced by 
 the reveries of a fervid imagination, or 
 the insinuating dexterity of self-love. 
 He is once reported to have said, 
 " How great might have been my 
 fame, had not my sole object been 
 truth ;" and the fixed foundation on 
 which his fame now stands, may be 
 considered as some reward for his 
 immediate self-denial. 
 
 If we proceed to compare their res- 
 pective intellects, it will, perhaps, be 
 
246 
 
 rather difficult to adjust the balance 
 of superiority. In the first, great cha- 
 racteristics of genius, unbounded com- 
 prehension of mind, and receptability 
 of images — in the power of communi- 
 cating, to mental matter, that living 
 energy and alimental nourishment- — 
 that intellectual leaven which gives it 
 the capacity of being kneaded and 
 worked up into an exhaustless diver- 
 sity of shapes and figurations — in the 
 power of extracting and drawing forth 
 all that human reason, when bent to 
 any given point, can educe — in the 
 power of conceiving mighty plans in 
 the mind without destroying, in 
 the grasp of the whole, the beauty and 
 the symmetry of the parts — in these 
 first and foremost requisites of genius, 
 the endowments of both seem very 
 evenly divided, though the balance, if 
 at all, preponderates on the side of 
 Johnson. He had, certainly, more of 
 the vivifying mind of a poet — more of 
 that brightness of imagination which 
 clothes all objects in a vesture of 
 splendour — more of that fervid fulness 
 which deepens and swells the current 
 of thought— but not more of the 
 boundless expansion and versatility of 
 mind — not more of the variegated ex- 
 uberance of imagery, or expatiating 
 ubiquity of fancy. He had, perhaps, 
 not so much of that wide sweep of in- 
 tellect, which, like a drag-net, draws 
 all within its reach into its capacious 
 reservoir of illustration, and which 
 diminishes and contracts the resources 
 of ingenuity by its extraordinary pow- 
 er of exhaustion ; nor had he any 
 part of that fiery fervour, that indomit- 
 able vehemence, which blazed forth in 
 Warburton ; with which he could 
 burst through every bondage, and 
 overcome every obstacle ; which it was 
 impossible to withstand in its attacks, 
 or delay in its course ; and which, 
 like the burning simoom of the Ara- 
 bian deserts, absolutely devastated and 
 laid waste the regions of literature, 
 with the sultriness of its ardour, and 
 the unquenchableness of its flame. 
 
 In logical strength and acuteness- — 
 in the faculty of seeing immediately 
 the weak side of an argument, and ex- 
 posing its fallacy with clearness and 
 force — in those powers which Dr John- 
 son has called the grappling irons of 
 the understanding — each was superlat- 
 ively pre-eminent ; and it would be 
 difficult to decide which is the supe-r 
 rior. Both great masters of the science 
 
 On the Literary Characters of 
 
 [Dec. 
 
 of reasoning — endowed with that pe- 
 netration of discernment, which in a 
 moment pierces through the sophisti- 
 cations of argumentation, and unravels 
 the mazes of subtlety with intuitive 
 quickness and precision — they were 
 yet considerably different in the man- 
 ner in which those talents were dis- 
 played. In Johnson, the science of 
 reasoning has the appearance of being 
 more a natural faculty ; and in War- 
 burton, more an artificial acquirement. 
 The one delighted in exhibiting it in 
 its naked force and undivided power — 
 the other was fonder of dividing it 
 into distinctions, and reducing it into 
 parts. The one delighted to over- 
 whelm and confound — the other ra- 
 ther to lead into intricacies, and puz- 
 zle with contradictions. The one 
 wielded his weapons with such over- 
 powering strength, that skill was use- 
 less, and art unnecessary — the other 
 made use of them as an experienced 
 fencing-master, whom great natural 
 strength, joined with much acquired 
 skill, render irresistible. In the 
 one, the first blow was generally the 
 decider of the combat— in the other, 
 the contest was often more protracted, 
 though the success in the end not less 
 sure. It was the glory of the one, to 
 evince at once his power, and, by a 
 mighty blow, to destroy the antago- 
 nist who assailed him — while it was at 
 once the delight and pride of the other, 
 to deprive his opponent gradually of 
 every particle of armour and weapon 
 of defence ; and when he had riven 
 away every obstacle and protection, 
 exultingly and mercilessly to despatch 
 him. 
 
 In real and true taste, Johnson was 
 unquestionably the superior. Dis- 
 carding all those systems of criticism 
 which had so long fettered and con- 
 fined the efforts of talent, he first esta- 
 blished criticism on the basis and 
 foundation of common sense; and thus 
 liberated our future Shakspeares from 
 those degrading chains and unworthy 
 shackles, which custom had so long al- 
 lowed the weak to impose upon the 
 strong. His critical decisions — where- 
 ever personal hostility did not inter- 
 fere, and wherever his want of the 
 finer and more delicate perception of 
 inanimate or intellectual beauty did 
 not incapacitate him from judging cor- 
 rectly — are, and ever will be, incon- 
 testible for their truth, and unequalled 
 for their talent, and carry with them 
 
1820/3 
 
 Bishop Warburton and Dr Johnson. 
 
 that undeniable authority and weight, 
 which nothing can question or with- 
 stand. Had he been, perhaps, a little 
 less prejudiced, and a little more largely 
 gifted with that fine feeling, which is 
 as necessary to form a great critic as a 
 great poet, he would certainly have 
 been entitled to take a higher place in 
 the province of criticism than any man 
 who went before, or shall hereafter 
 succeed him. Of this true taste, in 
 Warburton there was a most lament- 
 able deficiency : with an equal lack of 
 the more delicate and imaginative qua- 
 lifications for critical judgment, he 
 possessed none of that sound discrimi- 
 native power, and unerring rectitude 
 of tact, which so eminently distin- 
 guished Johnson. The bias of his 
 mind in criticism seems totally per- 
 verted and warped, and the obliquity 
 of his critical judgment is often as un- 
 accountable as it is amazing. A great 
 part of this is owing to the bigotted 
 adherence which he placed in the sys- 
 tems of the French critics, so popular 
 in England in the beginning of the 
 last century ; and a much greater, to 
 his own unconquerable propensity for 
 adjusting and fashioning every thing 
 according to the decrees of some stan- 
 dard hypothesis which had taken pos- 
 session of his mind, and on which, 
 like the bed of Procrustes, he racked 
 and tortured every unfortunate sub- 
 ject, till he had reduced it, by a pro- 
 cess of dislocation, into some conform- 
 ity with his theories. His fondness 
 for Dr Bentley, and Dr Bentley 's style 
 of criticism, was also another draw- 
 back in his qualifications : from him 
 he derived that inextinguishable rage 
 for emendation, which has descended, 
 like the prophet's mantle, from critic 
 to critic in succession ; and, indeed, 
 what Bentley has performed upon 
 Milton, Warburton has no less scru- 
 pulously performed upon Shakspeare, 
 though perhaps, with much more 
 acuteness and ingenuity, in the exer- 
 cise of his editorial capacity. For 
 wanting this emendatory ardour — or, 
 as he would call it, this critical vo»s — 
 he despised Dr Johnson ; though, for 
 his superabundance of it, Dr Johnson 
 might much more justly have despised 
 him. To Warburton, criticism was 
 little else than ingenuity in inventing 
 fresh varieties of the text, and dexte- 
 rity and plausibility in their explana- 
 tion. An author, chosen for the sub- 
 ject of critical illustration, was to him 
 
 247 
 
 nothing else than a lamb led out to 
 the slaughter, for the purpose of try- 
 ing the sharpness of his knife ; or an 
 anvil, by frequently striking which 
 his commentator might elicit scintilla- 
 tions and sparkles of his own. If he 
 ever shines, it is always at the expense 
 of his author. He seems utterly in- 
 capable of entering into the spirit of 
 his text — of identifying himself with 
 his subject — of losing his own indivi- 
 duality and consequence in his author 
 and his author's beauties. He had 
 none of that true and refreshing spirit 
 of criticism, which pours down a 
 fresh radiance on the withering beau- 
 ties of antiquity, and discloses new 
 graces wherever its illuminating re- 
 splendences are thrown, and which, 
 like the skilful varnisher of some an- 
 cient painting, renews and renovates, 
 in the subject, its brilliancy and rich- 
 ness of colouring, without altering the 
 character of its loveliness, or impair- 
 ing the symmetry of its proportions. 
 
 With the power of wit, both were 
 almost equally gifted ; and the precise 
 nature and description of that wit was 
 in both pretty nearly the same. It 
 was not that delicately gentle and re- 
 fined species which distinguished Ad- 
 dison, and which gave an almost eva- 
 nescent air to the humour of his pages 
 — but that coarse and forcible strength 
 of wit, or rather humour, which it is 
 impossible to withstand, and which 
 breaks upon an adversary as a torrent 
 impetuous and overwhelming — abso- 
 lutely stunning and confounding with 
 its vehemence, its energy, and its force. 
 Those who wish to see this species of 
 wit in its highest perfection, cannot 
 be better referred than to the contro- 
 versial writings of Warburton, or of 
 Dr Bentley, from whom Warburton 
 adopted his style in controversy. It 
 was this overflowing and vigorous pos- 
 session of wit which rendered John- 
 son so powerful in conversation, and 
 enabled Warburton in controversy to 
 defy the hosts of enemies who assailed 
 him. Of those enemies, many were 
 more exactly learned as to the point in 
 question than himself — many equally 
 sound reasoners — and, what is of no 
 small advantage in reasoning, had a 
 much better cause to defend, but they 
 were all in the end worsted, defeated, 
 and put to flight, by the auxiliary sallies 
 of his wit, which came forth in vollies 
 as unexpected as they were irresistible. 
 That this species of wit should fre« 
 
On the Literary Characters of 
 
 248 
 
 quently be coupled with scurrility, 
 was wnat might readily be anticipated 
 — it was totally destitute of delicacy, 
 and had no refinement or polish. It 
 perhaps cannot better be described, 
 than by comparing it with the wit of 
 Addison, to which it was, in all its 
 shapes, totally dissimilar. The one 
 was a weapon infinitely more power- 
 ful — though the other required much 
 more of dexterity and science in its 
 application. The former was much 
 more the instrument of a barbarian — 
 the latter of a civilized combatant. 
 The one was more fitted for the lighter 
 skirmishes of intellectual warfare, and 
 softened courtliness of social inter- 
 course — the other more adapted for 
 those contests, where no quarter is 
 given, and no indulgence is expected. 
 In the one, wit was so highly polished, 
 as frequently to lose its effect — in the 
 other, it was often so coarse and per- 
 sonal, as to defeat its very purpose. 
 In the one, it is the arch smile of con- 
 temptuous scorn — in the other, the 
 loud horse-laugh of ferocious defiance. 
 The one was more fitted for the casti- 
 gation of manners — the other better 
 adapted for the concussion of minds. 
 The wit of the former was, like the 
 missile of the Israelite, often over- 
 coming, from the skill with which it 
 was thrown — and that of the latter, 
 the ponderous stone of Ajax laid hold 
 of with extraordinary strength, and 
 propelled with extraordinary fury. In 
 short, the wit of Addison, when com- 
 pared with that of Warburton and 
 Johnson, was what the polished sharp- 
 ness of the rapier is to the ponderous 
 weight of the battle-axe, or as the inno- 
 cuous brilliancy of the lightning, to the 
 overpowering crash of the thunderbolt. 
 In poetical genius and capability, it 
 would perhaps be unfair to compare 
 them. What Warburton has written 
 in verse, was merely the first juve- 
 nile trying of his pen, and therefore 
 hardly could hope to rival the mature 
 and laboured poetical compositions of 
 Johnson ; yet we may doubt whether, 
 if Warburton had written more of 
 poetry, he would have written better, 
 or ever risen above mediocrity in the 
 efforts of poetical talent. Of those 
 higher qualifications of imagination 
 and sensibility, which every true poet 
 must possess, he was, as well as John- 
 son, utterly destitute ; but he had not, 
 like Johnson, a mind stored with a 
 rich fund of poetical images, or a nice 
 
 [Dec. 
 
 perception of harmony in sound, or 
 melody in versification. His transla- 
 tions are merely the productions of a 
 school-boy, and such productions as 
 many a school-boy would be ashamed 
 to own. He seems to have possessed 
 no ear attuned to the harmony of num- 
 bers — no fondness for the music of 
 rhyme, or the march of periods. In 
 this department of genius, therefore, 
 he was utterly inferior to Johnson, 
 who, if he did not possess the fine eye 
 and highest exaltation of a poet, could 
 clothe every subject he descanted upon 
 with sonorous grandeur of verse, and 
 gorgeous accompaniments of fancy. 
 
 In the beauty of style, and the or- 
 naments of language, Johnson, it is 
 well known, was most immeasurably 
 superior. His writings have given an 
 increase of correctness and purity, a 
 transfusion of dignity and strength to 
 our language, which is unexampled 
 in the annals of literature, and which 
 corrected, in their influence on our 
 dialect, the diffused tameness of 
 Addison, and the colloquialism of 
 Swift. Whatever nearer approaches 
 have been made to perfection in our 
 language, have all been established on 
 the foundation of his writings ; and, 
 perhaps, it would not be exceeding 
 the bounds of justice to affirm, that 
 more is due to him in the refinement 
 of the English tongue, than to any 
 man in any language or in any coun- 
 try, with the single exception of Ci- 
 cero. If his own style itself is not 
 the best model in our language, it is 
 from it certainly that the best model 
 must be formed ; and, whoever shall 
 in the end attain that summit of per- 
 fection, it will be from the copious 
 fountain of Johnson that his materials 
 must be supplied. Of the graces and 
 elegancies of diction, Warburton, on 
 the contrary, had no conception: his 
 thoughts were turned out in the 
 dress which lay nearest to his hand ; 
 and often their multiplicity was too 
 great to allow him time to find for 
 each a proper and suitable covering of 
 expression. To harmony in the struc- 
 ture of cadences, or splendour in the 
 finishing of sentences, he was utterly 
 void of pretension, and was, moreover, 
 totally destitute of the power of se- 
 lection or choice of words. Yet, he 
 cannot justly be accused of neglect or 
 contempt of the beauties of style, for 
 no one altered more incessantly, or 
 altered to less purpose, than Warbur- 
 
18200 
 
 Bishop Warburton and Dr Johnson. 
 
 ton. ,In one of his letters, lie acknow- 
 ledges, that there are many thousand 
 corrections and alterations merely of 
 language in the second edition of his 
 Julian ; and, to my own knowledge, 
 there are no less than 20,000 verbal 
 corrections in the several editions of 
 his Divine Legation, almost every one 
 of which has no other? effect than to 
 render that worse which before was 
 bad. He compared himself, in his 
 alterations, to the bear who licks into 
 form its shapeless offspring : but, with 
 little felicity of comparison, for his 
 alterations, though they always bring 
 down and reduce to tameness the ori- 
 ginal nervous force of the expression, 
 have seldom the effect of adding to 
 its elegance or removing its infirmi- 
 ties. Very different, in this respect, 
 was Johnson's character in writing, 
 who is, like Shakspeare, hardly ever 
 known to have altered or corrected 
 his productions after publication ; and 
 whose mastery of n diction was such, 
 that it immediately brought, at his 
 command, the best and most appro- 
 priate language which his subject re- 
 quired. The answering power of his 
 expression, were always exactly propor- 
 tioned to the demand of his thought : 
 there is never any incongruity of this 
 kind perceptible in his writings ; what 
 he thought strongly, he could express 
 forcibly and well ; and what he had 
 once written, became fixed, and fixed, 
 because it was impossible for altera- 
 tion to improve, or correction to 
 amend ^ it. The greatest fault, per- 
 haps, in his style, is the want of 
 flexibility — the want of variety adapt- 
 ed for every varying occasion : it was 
 too uniform to alter — it was too stiff 
 to bend — its natural tone was too high 
 to admit of a graceful descent — the 
 same was the expression, and the 
 same the pompousness of language, 
 whether he descanted as a moralist, 
 or complained as an advertiser : whe- 
 ther he weighed in his balance the 
 intellects of Shakspeare and Milton, 
 or denounced, with threats of punish- 
 ment, against the person or persons, 
 unknown, who had pirated a paper 
 of his Idler. In Warburton's diction, 
 which was uniformly faulty, it is 
 needless to expatiate on any particu- 
 lar faults; we may, however, men- 
 tion that it was overrun with foreign 
 idioms, and exotic phraseology, and 
 that it particularly abounds in Galli- 
 cisms, which almost disgrace every 
 
 249 
 
 sentence. In both, the style doubtless 
 took its tincture from the peculiar 
 complexion of their minds ; and while 
 in the one it swelled into majestic 
 elegance and dignified strength, in 
 the other, it broke out into uncouth 
 harshness, and uncultivated force. 
 
 In extent of learning, in profundity 
 and depth of erudition, Warburton 
 may justly claim the superiority. No- 
 thing more illustrates the different 
 characters of these great men, than 
 the different manner in which their 
 reading was applied. In Johnson, 
 acquired learning became immediately 
 transmuted into mind — it immediate- 
 ly was con substantiated with its re- 
 ceiver ; it did not remain dormant, like 
 a dull and inert mass in the intellect, 
 unaltered and unalterable, but enter- 
 ed, if I may use the expression, into 
 the very core and marrow of the 
 mind, and became a quality and 
 adjunct of the digestive power ; it 
 was instantaneously concocted into 
 intellectual chyle — his mind had 
 more the quality of a grinding en- 
 gine, than a receiver ; every parti- 
 cle it absorbed became instinct with 
 vital life — like the power of flame it 
 consumed all approximating substan- 
 ces. In Warburton, the power of 
 digestion was certainly disproportion - 
 ed to the insatiability of appetite : — 
 what he could not retain, he was 
 therefore obliged immediately again 
 to eject, and he did again eject it, but 
 not in its received and original state, 
 but altered in its outward form and 
 semblance, and mouldered up into 
 some glittering and fantastical hypo- 
 thesis, some original and more allur- 
 ing shape, as different from its first 
 condition as is from the crawling cater- 
 pillar the butterfly which expands 
 its golden wings in the air. The de- 
 fects of his digestive faculty, were 
 amply supplied by his power of assi- 
 milation, which, spiderlike, had the 
 faculty of weaving innumerable webs 
 and phantasms out of the matter 
 which was presented to it, and dis- 
 guising and recasting into some other 
 outwardappearance those morsels which 
 were too hard to retain, and too pon- 
 derous to swallow. Such indeed was 
 the voracity of his appetite, that he 
 refused nothing which offered itself; 
 and the wide gulf of his intellectual 
 appetite, often reminds us of the Boa 
 Constrictor, after it has swallowed the 
 Rhinoceros, as it lies in gorged and 
 
$50 On the Literary Characters of QDec, 
 
 torpid fulness, stretched out in all its ment ; and what he had once learned, 
 
 giant length on the ground. This dif- 
 ference in the perception and appli- 
 cation of knowledge, was distinguish- 
 able in every production of these 
 great men ; it is perceptible from their 
 earlier works to their latest, and being 
 occasioned by the peculiar construc- 
 tion and formation of their mental 
 faculties, it formed the character of 
 their minds; and, therefore, conti- 
 nued, without receiving alteration, from 
 their first years of authorship to their 
 last. In Johnson, therefore, learning, 
 when received, might more properly 
 be called knowledge ; it was stripped 
 of its superfluous and unnecessary 
 parts— it was winnowed of its chaff. 
 
 his judgment was too sound to per- 
 mit him to warp, and his love of 
 truth too great to allow him to con- 
 ceal. 
 
 In private life, the character of War- 
 burton was distinguished by the same 
 kind of bold openness and unshrink- 
 ing cordiality ; the same livid warmth 
 in his enmities and friendships ; and 
 the same impatient haughtiness and 
 dogmatical resolution which stood 
 forth displayed in his writings. No 
 one communicated to his productions 
 more of his own personal character, 
 or drew his own full length so admi- 
 rably in his works. After a perusal 
 of what he has written, his character 
 
 ffdeposTted'in the receptacles of lies in all its native colours before our 
 a. , F 1-M. :„ ^xr„»-u„^» i«- wa e pvps. and we hardlv want the roti- 
 
 thought, while, in Warburton, it was 
 like clay thrown into a mould ready 
 prepared for it, for the purpose of 
 forming materials for building up to 
 their measureless height the countless 
 edifices of his fancy. 
 
 In that practical knowledge of, and 
 insight into human nature, which 
 forms the chief qualification for the 
 moralist, and the writer on men and 
 manners, Johnson was greatly supe- 
 rior to Warburton. The former had 
 acquired his knowledge in the tutor- 
 ing school of adversity ; and the long 
 and dreary probation he had to serve 
 before he attained to competence and 
 success, had given him a sound and 
 piercing view into life and human na- 
 ture, while the haughtiness of the 
 latter formed a kind of circle about 
 him, which prevented his mingling 
 with the crowd, and deriving, by uni- 
 versal converse and acquaintance, an 
 universal and comprehensive know- 
 ledge of man. He was also a more 
 prejudiced and less unbiassed specta- 
 tor of mankind, continually referring 
 their causes of action, not to the ac- 
 knowledged principles of experience, 
 but to some pre-conceived and ready- 
 fashioned theory of his own, with 
 which he made every deduction to 
 square in and quadrate, and to whose 
 decision he referred the settlement ot 
 all the various anomalies and pheno- 
 mena which distract the inquirer into 
 human nature. Otherwise was the 
 knowledge of Johnson formed. He 
 was no speculatist in his views o 
 
 eyes, and we hardly want the inti- 
 macy of a personal acquaintance to be 
 fully and thoroughly masters of his 
 peculiarities. What he thought, he 
 dauntlessly and fearlessly expressed. 
 Disguise he hated, and subterfuge he 
 despised. He who was the enemy of 
 Warburton, was sure of bold, honest, 
 and manly hostility ; he who was his 
 friend was equally certain of the full 
 participation of all the benefits of as- 
 sistance and protection. It was one 
 of his maxims, both in his public and 
 private character, " He who is not with 
 me is against me." He hated a neu- 
 tral worse even than an enemy; to 
 him indifference was worse than de-? 
 cided dislike ; imperturbable placidity 
 more disagreeable than a stonn. Pass 
 over his opinions or his productions 
 without giving any decided opinion as 
 to their justice or their merits, and 
 he would immediately number you 
 amongst the list of his foes, and let 
 loose upon you all the torrent of his 
 mingled scurrility and wit. This fer- 
 vid warmth of temper frequently over- 
 powered the cooler dictates of his rea- 
 son, and to this we may perhaps as- 
 cribe that high and overstrained excess 
 of praise which he showered down 
 upon the productions of his friends ; 
 for of flattery we cannot justly accuse 
 him: he would have disdained what he 
 conceived implied fear. One exception, 
 however, must be made to this re- 
 mark, and that is, the case of Bishop 
 Sherlock, whom, during his life, War- 
 burton extravagantly praised, and, at- 
 
 was no speculatist in nis vie^ ™ ^~» j ? j ^ nQt onl 
 
 acuteness and penetration of discern- grapna 
 6 
 
 ' 
 
18200 
 
 Bishop Warburton and Dr Johnson, 
 
 Divine Legation with the utmost con- 
 tumely and contempt. For neglect 
 of his clerical duties, Warburton has 
 been lashed by the unsparing hand of 
 a relentless satirist, whose pictures are 
 often less of true resemblances than 
 hideous caricatures ; but the suffrages 
 of many must overpower the testimony 
 of one ; and it has been almost uni- 
 versally agreed, that in the discharge 
 of the social relations of life, his con- 
 duct was equally faultless and exem- 
 plary. The character of Johnson has 
 been so often pourtrayed, and, through 
 the admirable delineations of his bio- 
 graphers, is now so well known, that it 
 would be useless to attempt to de- 
 scribe it. He had certainly more ha- 
 bitual reverence for what he conceived 
 to be truth ; was more rigid in his 
 morality, more fervid in his piety, 
 than Warburton. He had not less 
 perhaps of pride and haughtiness, but 
 his pride was more lofty, his haughti- 
 ness more independent. He could not 
 bend to greatness, nor stoop to rise as 
 Warburton certainly could do, and 
 sometimes did. His character, while 
 it was much more dignified than that 
 of Warburton, had not the same mix- 
 ture of impetuosity and warmth, and 
 thus he was prevented from falling into 
 those excesses which the former could 
 hardly avoid. Both had a certain por- 
 tion of intolerance in their dispositions, 
 but in Johnson that intolerance was 
 exerted against the oppugners of that 
 creed he had received from others, 
 while in Warburton it was directed 
 against the questioners of theories of 
 his own. In the one, it was prejudice 
 unmixed — in the other, it was always 
 prejudice co-operating with vanity. 
 Upon the whole, perhaps, the charac- 
 ter of Warburton, notwithstanding its 
 dictating and dogmatical insolence, 
 was the most attracting of the two. 
 There is, notwithstanding all its ef- 
 fervescences and excesses, a generous 
 fervour, a kindliness of soul, an en- 
 thusiastic warmth about it, which in- 
 duces us to like him in spite of our- 
 selves, and to which we can forgive 
 whatever is disgusting in his scurrili- 
 ty or revolting in his pride. 
 
 To bring my observations on the 
 characters of these great men to a close, 
 — in Warburton, the distinguishing fa- 
 culty was a fiery and ungovernable vi- 
 gour of intellect, a restless and irre- 
 pressible vehemence of mind, an un- 
 quenchable and never-dormant princi- 
 
 Vol. VIII. 
 
 25 1 
 
 pie of action, which required con* 
 tinually some fresh matter to work 
 on — some fresh subject to exercise its 
 power — some new and untried space 
 to perambulate and to pass through : 
 it was an ever- working and operating 
 faculty, an ever-moving and resisting 
 principle, which it was impossible to 
 tire or tame. There was nothing like 
 rest or slumber about it : it could not 
 stagnate ; it could not stop : it was im- 
 possible to weaken its energies, or to 
 contract their operation. No matter 
 was too tough for its force, no metal 
 too unmalleable for its strokes. 
 
 Such was the elasticity of its con- 
 stitution, that it could not be broken ; 
 such was its innate and surpassing re- 
 sistibility of temperament, that it could 
 not be overwhelmed. Entangle it with 
 subtleties, and it immediately snapt 
 asunder its bonds, as Sampson burst 
 the encompassing cords of the Philis- 
 tine. Bury it with learning, and it 
 immediately mounted up with the 
 brilliancy and rapidity of a sky-rocket, 
 and scattered about it sparks and 
 scintillations, which lightened the 
 whole atmosphere of literature. It 
 was this volatility of spirit, this forci- 
 ble and indomitable action of mind, 
 this never-tiring and never- weakening 
 intellectual energy, this bounding and 
 unceasing mental elasticity, which 
 serves to distinguish Warburton not 
 only from Dr Johnson, but also from 
 all the characters who have ever ap- 
 peared in literature ; and it is to the 
 self- corroding effect of these qualities, 
 that his alienation of mind at the lat- 
 ter period of his life is undoubtedly 
 to be attributed. 
 
 The mind of Johnson, on the con- 
 trary, was utterly devoid of all that 
 intellectual activity and elasticity 
 which Warburton possessed. There 
 was about it an habitual and dogged 
 sluggishness, an inert and listless tor- 
 por, a reluctance to call forth its ener- 
 gies and exercise its powers ; it slum- 
 bered, but its slumbers were those of 
 a giant. With more of positive force 
 when called into action, it had not 
 the same principle of motion, the 
 same continual beat, the same sleep- 
 less inquietude and feverish excite- 
 ment. It lay there like the levia- 
 than, reposing amidst the depths of 
 the ocean, till necessity drove it out 
 to display the magnitude of his 
 strength. The one waited quietly in 
 its den for food, while the other 
 21 
 
252 On the Literary Characters of Warburion and Johnson, £Dec. 
 
 prowled about continually for prey. 
 To the latter, inaction was impossi- 
 ble; to the former, voluntary exer- 
 tion was unknown. Solidity and con- 
 dension were the qualities of the one ; 
 continued vigour and pliability the 
 characteristics of the other. The one 
 as a machine, was more clumsy in its 
 movements ; the other, more light and 
 unincumbered, but less effectual in 
 its operation; the forces of the one 
 were more scattered, the resources of 
 the other less alert. In Warburton, 
 there was a boundless fertility of vi- 
 gour, which ripened up into all the 
 rankness of rich luxuriance. In John- 
 son, the harvest of intellect was not 
 so spontaneous, nor perhaps its fertili- 
 ty so great ; but when once raised, it 
 never required the hand of the weeder, 
 but rose unmixed with tares. The 
 genius of one, like a cascade, threw up 
 its water in the air, which glistened 
 in the sun, and shone with the varie- 
 ty of ten thousand hues and colour- 
 ings ; while the talents of the other 
 never exerted themselves, without 
 joining at the same time utility with 
 splendour. The one, like the Gladia- 
 tor of Lysippus, had every nerve in 
 motion, and every muscle flexible 
 with elasticity; wnile, in the other, 
 like the colossal statues of Michael 
 Angelo, all was undivided energy and 
 bursting strength. 
 
 Such were the characters of these 
 great men, of whom it is difficult to 
 decide which was the greater, or which 
 
 in a greater portion those 
 qualities which give a title to intellec- 
 tual supremacy. The fame of John- 
 son will hereafter principally rest on 
 his productions, as a moralist and a 
 critic; while that of Warburton, 
 when again revived, will as certainly 
 be raised on the foundation of his 
 theological writings. Whatever may 
 be thought of the truth of some of 
 his theories, or the unseemliness of 
 some of his attacks, it is impossible to 
 deny that his Alliance and Divine Le- 
 gation are the most splendid, the most 
 original, the most ingenious defences 
 of our ecclesiastical establishment, and 
 of revelation itself, that ever man con- 
 structed. On these, as on the sure 
 and unchangeable evidences of his 
 powers, his admirers may depend for 
 his reception with posterity; with 
 whom, when the name of Johnson, 
 rich in the accumulated tributes of 
 time, shall hereafter be accounted the 
 mightiest amongst those " who have 
 given ardour to virtue, and confidence 
 to truth;" then, shall the name of 
 Warburton, also, purified from the 
 stains which have obscured and sullied 
 its lustre, be numbered amongst the 
 brightestlights of the Protestant church 
 — amongst the greatest of those who 
 have adorned it by their genius, or ex- 
 alted it by their learning, a worthy 
 accession to the mighty fellowship and 
 communion of Episcopius, Chilling* 
 worth, and Hooker, 
 
 C.R. 
 
 SExMIHOR^E BIOGRAPHICiE. 
 
 No. II. 
 
 TO CHRISTOPHER NORTH, ESQ. 
 
 Leighton Buzzard, 1st Nov. 1S20« 
 Dear Sir, 
 My performance of posthumous justice to QZX., my late deceased and much 
 deplored friend, has been somewhat interrupted by a short absence from the 
 peaceful privacy I enjoy at Leighton Buzzard. Your ready compliance, how- 
 ever, with my desire, that these biographical jewels should not lie locked up in 
 a bibliothecary cabinet, has made me feel that I am enabled to be a faithful 
 executor to QZX.'s fame. By being evulgated in your Magazine, these are no 
 longer folia Sybillina ; they shall not float about unfixed, at the mercy, not 
 only of air, but of fire and steel. Had they not found such a receptacle, they 
 might perhaps (when my enraptured eye shall no more pore upon them, and 
 my protecting hand shall fail to guard them) have experienced the fate of ma- 
 ny of their ill-starred predecessors. The erudite labours of him who was di- 
 midium mei might, had they remained embodied in one frail MS. copy, have, 
 some years hence, really felt those shears which had begun their preparatory 
 flourish, when the original Magna Charta was but just rescued from being shi- 
 vered into tailors' measures ; or they might have perished as fellow-sufferer* 
 
1865.] Transubstantiation. 39 
 
 be taken in any sense conflicting with the realities of nature. 
 The overpowc ring necessity, therefore, is all invagination. Thus 
 there is no cc mpulsion to surrender the judgment of our senses, 
 where there aJ b no natural impediments to then/ legitimate action ; 
 and as there is in these words, on which th« argument of the 
 Romish Chur jh reposes, not a necessity, as thfey contend there is, 
 to lay the sen ses prostrate, in opposition to avery other instance 
 of God's deal ngs with His creatures, of a similar nature, and in 
 opposition to i law which we cannot conceive to be ever broken, 
 since it invoh es a contradiction to truth itself, it is quite certain 
 that the aposl les, as "simple-minded men,"|would agree with our 
 view of the t rhole circumstance of the sacramental benediction, 
 — that there yas no motive for thinking ona miracle in the least 
 degree whate 1 er. The apostles might well as "simple-minded" 
 men, imagine that our Saviour meant whaJthey saw in His hand 
 to be signifies nt of His body; — and learniij g«md reasoning, after 
 all, come to tl e plain common-sense settler] ent of the case at last, 
 as indeed it i ras to be expected that they 
 formed, we believe, almost or quite an int 
 
 little though! of the labour and ingenuity 
 Christ would give rise in future ages ; bu \ it would have been 
 wonderful — i ppalling indeed, if even the d ost laboured exercises 
 in Biblical li ;erature were not to arrive, ir a matter of sense, at 
 the same cor elusion as our own natural fa nilties : it would have 
 been most incredible, in short, if the mo t. subtle inquiries had 
 obliged us 1 3 decide any otherwise thaji like the reasonable 
 beings which God considers us to be in all His addresses to our 
 understandings, and in perfect consistency with His dispensa- 
 tions and Hk works. 
 
 E. C. K. 
 
 would. The apostles 
 itive decision. They 
 to which the words of 
 
 J 
 
\ 
 
 *Jr ' v^ > . t VA*1\\ \ \i\ 
 
 V 
 
 ( 40 ) [April, 
 
 BISHOP WARBURTON'S UNPUBLISHED LETTERS. 
 
 Warburton is a:writer who, whatever influence, good or evil, 
 he exerted on the English literature of his day, has at least 
 inseparably attached his name to it. We can scarcely glance at 
 the life of any author of that period without finding Warburton 
 more or less connected with it. To the life, as well as to the 
 works, of the greatest poet of his time, he contrived to affix 
 himself so closely that there is no possibility of detaching him 
 from them. We find him in connection with Bolingbroke and 
 Middleton, with Jortin and Hume, with Wesley and Whitfield, 
 with Cibber and Quin, with Mallet and Sterne. We look into 
 the biography of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, and we find him 
 there ; we look into the correspondence of the author of Pamela, 
 and we find him there. We think of commenting on Shak- 
 speare, and we cannot write our comments without paying some 
 attention to those of Warburton. 
 
 It is to the force df mind shewn in what he wrote, and not 
 to the real value of the writings themselves, that he owes the 
 notice which he has received. The Alliance and the Julian are 
 his two best pieces, considered as literary compositions ; but the 
 Divine Legation of course displays more intellectual power. 
 Hurd, speaking of this work to Warburton, said very justly, 
 "There was something in your mind, still more than in the 
 matter of your book,' which struck me." He could look, as 
 Pope said, on all sides' ot a question, and if judgment or honesty 
 did not always dictate his treatment of it, he never failed to 
 handle it with vigour. Whatever was the worth of what he 
 produced, it manifested mental power in the producer. 
 
 A number of his letters, as the public are aware, have been 
 recently brought to light, and lodged in the. British Museum. 
 We have looked through the collection. We find many of 
 them trifling and unimportant, relating to small matters of 
 business or trivial occurrences ; but in others we notice passages 
 of strong Warburtonian remark, much of it sarcastic. Some 
 of these we have extracted, and offer them to our readers, trust- 
 ing that they may find in them something to repay perusal. The 
 letters to the Hon. Charles Yorke, Lord Chancellor Hardwicke's 
 son, are the most attractive, as there was no one, except Hurd, 
 to whom Warburton wrote with so much freedom ; and it is 
 from these, accordingly, that our extracts will chiefly be taken. 
 
 In 1753, after receiving from Lord Hardwicke a prebendal 
 stall at Gloucester, which had been previously occupied by Cud- 
 worth, he writes, — 
 
 " Dear and honoured Sir, — I received your kind remem- 
 
1865.] Bishop Warburton's Unpublished Letters. 41 
 
 brance from Caryl. He told me what you said of my relation 
 to Cudworth, which I did not know. So much I did know, 
 that this stall had been occupied by Bishop Bull. If these two 
 men preceded me, one of whom was so eminent for profane 
 knowledge, and the other for sacred, I accept the omen (many 
 an ancient sage would have been glad of one so promising) for 
 the success of my studies, which, you know, all tend to promote 
 both, by the mutual light I make them lend to one another." 
 
 When he took possession of his stall, he found that there 
 had recently been a violent contest between the Dean and the 
 Bishop about ecclesiastical rights ; on which he observes, — 
 
 " As to the ground of this civil rage, the Dean's exercise of 
 power, I suppose one may say of it, as of Sir Roger's head on 
 the sign-post, much may be urged on both sides ; the features 
 were enlarged, and a little ferocious ; there was something of 
 the Saracen mixed with the mild Christian Dean. But he 
 pleaded, what sanctifies all rogueries in the Church, conscience. 
 In truth power ecclesiastical is a devilish bewitching thing, of 
 which this good Dean has just given me a very lively example. 
 Could you believe that this conscientious man, who grows every 
 day fonder and fonder of Church authority, is quite satiated 
 with civil power ? He came to me the other day, and with 
 earnestness begged of me that when I went to town, I would 
 present his duty to my Lord Chancellor, requesting it as the 
 greatest favour, that his lordship would be pleased to strike him 
 out of the commission of the peace, for that his age and in- 
 firmities are so great as utterly to incapacitate him for the due 
 discharge of his office. You will ask why the same cause does 
 not dispose him to devolve his church power on Dr. Atwell and 
 Mr. Wolley, who were so well disposed to ease him of it. All 
 I can say to this difficulty is, that I believe age and infirmities, 
 which disable men for the discharge of civil power, make them 
 but the fitter for the exercise of the ecclesiastical ; for which, 
 perhaps, many physical as well as moral reasons might be given. 
 As thus, civil power, regarding the body and goods, requires 
 health and reason to administer them; but power ecclesiastical 
 is conversant only with spiritual things ; and that spiritual thing, 
 the mind, like all other good things which are covered with a 
 case or husk, is supposed to be then in perfection when the 
 covering is quite decayed, and, as the poet says, lets in new light 
 from the chinks made by time. Again, the passions of hu- 
 manity are seen strongly to influence the proceedings in human 
 judicatories, but the ecclesiastical admit of none of this weak- 
 ness, as is evident from the proceedings of the most perfect of 
 all, the Inquisition. Now extreme old age is observed to harden 
 
42 Bishop Warburtotfs Unpublished Letters. [April, 
 
 the mind, and make it insensible to the foolish extremes of 
 human pity. 
 
 " I do all I can to mollify that stiffness which the past heats 
 have left behind them ; and I come in the nick, like Rabelais' 
 famed arbitrator, who never offered his arbitration till the two 
 parties had bled pretty freely. Besides, that demon of conten- 
 tion, which the evil spirit sent into I don't know how many 
 cathedrals at a time, to inflame the canons against their deans, 
 seems to have returned into the bottomless pit, and left both 
 deans and canons to their usual repose." 
 
 The following postscript to a letter written the same year 
 may be worth transcription: — 
 
 "You may value yourselves as much as you please about 
 your precision of evidence in your courts of justice. Commend 
 me to the little Island of Montserrat (as I find the case quoted 
 in Barbot's trial) for carrying the point of positive evidence to 
 perfection : ' Captain Watts was indicted for killing Ould in a 
 duel. The witness swore she saw Watts draw the sword out of 
 Ould's body ; but as she could not swear she saw him thrust it 
 in, the jury acquitted the prisoner at the bar/ How nice, how 
 delicate, how distinguishing is justice, when she is left to herself, 
 and permitted to thrust her bandage aside \" 
 
 In January, 1754, he reads Birch's Memoirs of the Reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth, published shortly before, and says, — 
 
 " We have been often told that Elizabeth's parsimony went 
 to an extreme ; but I think we never had so curious a picture 
 of it as in these Memoirs, where we find that to spare her 
 gratuities even to her bedchamber women, she ordered the 
 bishops, on their promotion, to give large sums unto them, and 
 suffered herself to be solicited by them to influence even the 
 Chancellor's decrees, as appears by the memorial of Dr. Fletcher 
 on behalf of his brother's family, and the story of the Lord 
 Keeper Puckering and one of the ladies of the bedchamber in 
 the cause of Booth, who seems to have been a notorious offender. 
 
 " These papers fully confirm what you long ago conjectured 
 to me of the motives for the two Cecils traversing Bacon's 
 pursuits at Court. And the resentment of the two Bacons for 
 these ill turns, as they express it in these papers, throw new 
 light upon Bacon's Essay on Deformity. What made me think 
 of that was the reading of Mr. Hay's extreme pretty Essay on 
 Deformity. Bacon, employing a Scripture expression (not 
 quoting a Scripture affirmation), says, as he is quoted by Mr. 
 Hay, p. 41, that ' deformed persons are for the most part void 
 of natural affection.' Don't you think he had his eye on Sir H. 
 Cecil, and his unkindness to this part of his family ?" 
 
1865.] Bishop Warburton's Unpublished Letters. 43 
 
 Warburton, it will be recollected/ on visiting Oxford with 
 Pope, was asked by Dr. Leigh, the Vice-Chancellor, if he would 
 like to receive a doctor's degree in divinity ; and an offer was at 
 the same time made to Pope of a degree in civil law. Both 
 expressed assent; but Warburton's degree, through the influence 
 of a party unfavourable to him, was refused ; and Pope, in con- 
 sequence, would not accept his. Both afterwards made light of 
 the matter ; and Warburton, in the following passage, affects to 
 set a Lambeth degree, to which he was obliged to have recourse, 
 above a degree from a University : — 
 
 " You must know that, taking it into my head that a degree 
 from the Archbishop was more honourable than one in course at 
 a University, and would be a kind of sanction to my theological 
 principles against bigots, etc., I wrote his Grace a letter on that 
 head ; and my choosing to break the matter without the inter- 
 vention of any other person, was, I told him, out of the respect 
 and reverence I owed him ; as he was the only proper judge of 
 the propriety of it, and so was quite free to determine what was 
 fitting. I received the most obliging answer from his Grace, 
 expressing the pleasure I gave him in affording him the oppor- 
 tunity of shewing his regard for me, etc. I know you will be 
 so good, when you next see him, to assure him of the extreme 
 grateful sense I have of all his goodness to me, as you know me 
 best, and become a kind of sponsor for me in bringing me into 
 his knowledge and good opinion." 
 
 In another passage he has another sarcasm at a doctorate 
 from Oxford, "that Athens of loyalty and learning," as he 
 calls it : — 
 
 " It is hard to say if Church or State be at present more 
 benefited by it. For I think the fashionable divinity of Hut- 
 chinson is well-matched with the fashionable politics of Filmar. 
 But it is certain Whigs and rational divines are at present the 
 horror of that University. One thing of late among them was 
 not so well; . . . their metamorphosing so many simple rustics 
 into civil doctors. The unnecessary procreation of lawyers bodes 
 but ill to a commonwealth. But the best of it is, that an Oxford 
 doctor, like a trainband drum, forebodes no mischief or blood- 
 shed." 
 
 In the same letter he says, in allusion to his contemplated 
 View of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy : — 
 
 " I amuse myself with a thing, which, was you here, you 
 would be plagued with, because I never like my things so well as 
 while you are reading of them. I have a better reason for your 
 reading them, but, to tell you the truth, this flatters me most. 
 The thing will be without my name, and a secret. I wish it 
 
44 Bishop Warburton' s Unpublished Letters. [April, 
 
 may in do way displease one I have so much reason to value as 
 our friend ; nay, I would not even have it displease any of his 
 friends on his account. You will ask me then why I venture 
 upon it. I will tell you sincerely. I think it my duty ; for I 
 am a Christian. I think I was designed to be the declared 
 enemy of infidelity; for I am a little fanatical. If it was not 
 for this, the iniquity of the parsons, with regard to me, would 
 have deterred me. For though this thing be an apology, as it 
 were, for the whole order, yet I am not certain whether it will 
 not renew their clamours against me for the scurrility of my pen." 
 
 The scurrility was so gross that Murray, Lord Mansfield, 
 wrote Warburton an anonymous remonstrance upon it. As to 
 the clergy, Warburton is constantly complaining that they were 
 either too dull to understand him, or wilfully misunderstood him 
 in order to abuse him. Impenetrability to his argument he 
 charges upon Sir John Hill, the botanical Knight of the Polar 
 Star, who thought proper to assail Lord Bolingbroke : — 
 
 " Hill has wrote something against Lord Bolingbroke, and in 
 the 481st page he charges me with holding that Moses did not 
 believe the immortality of the soul. The man had no ill-will in 
 this stupendous blunder. It was mere ignorance. Bolingbroke 
 understood the matter better. He saw that all the force of my 
 inference for an extraordinary providence, from the omission, 
 depended on the truth that Moses did believe the immortality of 
 the soul ; and therefore amongst various arguments he brings to 
 evade my conclusion, he urges this as one, that Moses did not 
 believe the immortality. I mention only this to shew you what 
 readers and answerers of the Divine Legation I have had. You 
 will be surprised when I tell you that Brown, who referred me 
 to this place in Hill, did not apprehend the blunder, for he speaks 
 of him as only differing from me on the question of the Divine 
 Legation. In short, I never met with any body who understood 
 the book but yourself and Towne. 
 
 " A little before Barrow went on his travels he published his 
 geometrical lectures. Ten years afterwards, on his return, he 
 inquired who had read or understood his book ; and the number 
 was reduced to two, though the two greatest mathematicians in 
 Europe. On which he thought it time to turn himself to other 
 matters. Something of this I am ready to do, if not to say, in 
 my own case." 
 
 In the beginning of 1756 Prior Park is visited by Potter, the 
 son of the Archbishop, whom scandal declared to have been too 
 intimate with Mrs. Warburton, and by Pitt, afterwards Earl of 
 Chatham, who had then been obliged to resign the Secretaryship 
 of State to Henry Fox, afterwards Lord Holland : 
 
1865.] Bishop War burton's Unpublished Letters. 45 
 
 "Potter is here; so tins brought Mr. Pitt to dinner on 
 Wednesday and yesterday ; which was oftener by twice than I 
 wished. For a man who has used my friend with the indignity 
 he did the Attorney a year ago, I profess the utmost contempt 
 of, and so consequently cannot wish to meet. I should have had 
 just the same sentiments of him, had you, instead of the Attorney, 
 been the object of his ill-usage. For my friend in such cases is 
 more than myself. One has not a right to forgive so easily as 
 in one's own case. And of a colder friendship I am ready to 
 say with Hotspur in the play, 
 
 'Then out upon this half-fac'd fellowship.' 
 
 I think just the same, and for the like reason, of the new Secre- 
 tary [of State, Fox], for an ounce of friendship weighs more 
 with me than a whole cart-load of politics. 
 
 " Pitt appears very gay, very disengaged ; yet, through all 
 this, I think I can see the marks of a restless disappointed 
 ambition. I am much deceived in him, if he had even the least 
 notion of friendship, but as the foundation of a political connec- 
 tion. As his friend Littleton's [Lyttelton's] friendships, I 
 believe, generally rose out of vanity, it would be hard to say 
 which was most likely to be lasting, for flattery is as insatiable 
 as ambition. 
 
 " To tell you the truth, I am apt to be a free speaker, but I 
 had not a good opinion enough of these people to be so. My 
 politics make part of my morals." 
 
 About the same time we find that Yorke, like most of the 
 public, had passed an unfavourable judgment on Hurd's Seventh 
 Dissertation on the Delicacy of Friendship, and did not approve 
 of Warburton's fierce attacks on his opponents : 
 
 "You remember," says Warburton, " what passed between 
 us concerning the Seventh Dissertation, and how amicably each 
 of us enjoyed our own different sentiments on that matter. But 
 I took no more pleasure than you will do, to learn (and I learned 
 it by accident, not from the author of the Dissertation, who does 
 not so much as suspect that it is come to my knowledge) that 
 your sentiments are as well known at Cambridge as to me. I 
 ascribe this to the indiscretion of a common acquaintance [Dr. 
 Brown, the author of the Estimate'], whom it is very like you 
 might (as it was natural you should) have told your mind to on 
 this occasion. This person, to excuse what he himself had said, 
 and very strangely, I suspect used your authority, and abused 
 your confidence, to justify his own conduct, which had not one 
 feature of that perfect candour which accompanied all you said 
 and thought of this matter. 
 
46 Bishop Warburton's Unpublished Letters. [April, 
 
 " All this would not have been worth a single thought, had 
 it not reminded me of my misfortune (a misfortune I do not 
 think a light one), that, whether I defended myself against the 
 most villanous abuses of my enemies, or was defended by a 
 friend from the low scoundrel envy of one [Dr. Jortin] who had 
 profaned that name, the vindication was never greatly to your 
 satisfaction. I think, had it been your fortune to be used in 
 this manner, either by open enemies, or, what is infinitely worse, 
 by a false friend, I should have but little conception how the 
 villany would be reproved or repelled too severely. But do I 
 therefore complain on account of this misfortune? Far from it. 
 I think our difference of judgment on this point a mere matter 
 of taste, arising from the difference of constitution, and as little 
 to be disputed about as that. All I complain of is this supposed 
 indiscretion of our acquaintance; who, before he had an oppor- 
 tunity of knowing your sentiments (if, indeed, he ever did know 
 them, and I not mistaken in my suspicion), wrote very unfriendly 
 to one in Cambridge, who replied to him in these words : — l We 
 have seen the pamphlet you speak of. I dare say what you 
 mention will be the general opinion. For our age, so happily 
 refined out of all passion, is arrived at that pitch of delicacy, that 
 it can bear neither panegyric nor satire; and this pamphlet, being 
 a compound of both, is likely, for a double reason, to be very 
 offensive/ The author of the Dissertation likewise answered 
 him on this occasion, but in a very different strain : — ' Since,' 
 says he, ' you have been so free to declare your disapprobation 
 of that piece, I will tell you a secret which I have told to no 
 other, and which your commendations should never have drawn 
 from me, which is, that 2" writ it myself; that I write it in mere 
 indignation at the paltriest and dirtiest fellow living [Jortin], 
 not only without any knowledge or allowance of Dr. W., but 
 with a fixed resolution that he should never know it. In this 
 last, indeed, I have not succeeded, for he fixed it upon me with 
 so little doubt, that it would have been a childish affectation in 
 me to deny it/ 
 
 " I know you will be charmed with such sentiments, however 
 little satisfied you may be with the works they produce. One 
 thing I am confident of, that in this whole matter your senti- 
 ments were wholly guided by what you conceive to be my true 
 interest." 
 
 In the next letter he says : — 
 
 " I was angry at Brown, and it was him I suspected of the 
 indiscretion; and, therefore, I had a mind you should know it. 
 
 "You know how I love you; and, therefore, I am always 
 [so] impatient if I cannot bring you to think as I, that I bring 
 
1865.] Bishop Warbur ton's Unpublished Letters. 47 
 
 myself to think as you. And what is it but your goodness and 
 sweetness of maimers, as well as great parts, that make me desire 
 this ? As to others, I am as indifferent as if I was no author ; 
 as indifferent as a man can possibly be who sincerely thinks he 
 finds truth in religion, and loves what he finds." 
 
 In a letter written August 6, 1756, we meet with a passage 
 shewing how Admiral Byng was calumniated : — 
 
 " Byng is burnt in effigy in almost every town of Great 
 Britain, and yet I meet with nobody who believes that he will 
 be brought to the justice he deserves. I have been told from 
 good hands that it is a notorious truth that he sought or accepted 
 the command with no other view than to engross the plunder of 
 the French trade; and, indeed, I think this is a key to every 
 step he took. I find how the public begins to open its eyes con- 
 cerning Lord Bath's Bill, and that the extravagant and mad 
 encouragement given to seamen has now rooted out all the 
 bravery of the British flag, and planted only avarice and pol- 
 troonery in its stead. But if it were not a folly (almost equal 
 to the knavery of factions) to suppose that they would be atten- 
 tive either to common sense or common justice, while they were 
 driving on the ends of their party, one would wonder they should 
 not see that their beneficence might have been so directed, with- 
 out being much abated, as really to encourage the bravery of 
 the fleet, by giving half the capture of merchantmen, and the 
 whole capture of men-of-war. God mend our posterity. The 
 present generation seem resolved not to co-operate with him, 
 and he will never do the work alone." 
 
 From a letter of Oct. 2, 1756, we learn that Yorke solicited 
 from his father the Deanery of Lincoln for Warburton, but that 
 the solicitation was fruitless. 
 
 In Dec, 1757, we find Hurd, at Prior Park, reading over 
 with Warburton his Dialogue on the Constitution, " intended to 
 confute that principle of Hume, that the Stuarts aimed at nothing 
 but preserving the prerogative as they found it." " He has 
 made," adds Warburton, " a marvellous use of a few hints I 
 gave him." When he was preferred to the Deanery of Bristol, 
 in 1758, he says that he considers himself obliged for it, not to 
 Mr. Pitt or the Duke of Newcastle, but to Mr. Allen. " Had 
 it been any personal consideration in the Duke of Newcastle, I 
 suppose it would have been the Bishoprick rather than the 
 Deanery ; for, if I am accustomed to rate myself at anything, it 
 is merely by comparison with the market standard, and not for 
 any intrinsic value." Of Brown's " Vindication " of his Esti- 
 mate he says, " I told him I expected he should tell the world 
 that no friend had any hand or concern directly or indirectly in 
 
48 Bishop War burton's Unpublished Letters. [April, 
 
 this foolish matter ; and he has done so. You will laugh at the 
 pompous Galimatias, in which he acquaints the world with the 
 origin of his Estimate. He talks as being profound in a subject 
 of which he knows nothing ; and I objected this to him, as I 
 did to the general plan of his Apology ; that the offence taken 
 by the public was chiefly to the manner, and his l Vindication ' 
 is of the matter" 
 
 Giving an account of his entrance on the Deanery of Bristol, 
 he thus speaks of the Chapter : — 
 
 " I found a very small cathedral, but it contrives to make as 
 violent a noise as the largest. But with regard to the offices 
 thereunto belonging, it bears much more the face of an hospital. 
 I found myself attended (nor do I exaggerate, which you will 
 be ready to suspect) by the deaf, the blind, and the lame, and 
 with every kind of invalid but the dumb. Had I been an 
 apostle, what noble subjects had I here to work upon ! I might 
 have rendered this little blind deanery illustrious for its miracles, 
 but being only in the number of those miserable sinners, doomed 
 to pray for daily pardon and daily bread, I had only room for 
 that other apostolic gift of charity, in its fullest extent, both to 
 the living and the dead, for I can but just forgive the late Dean 
 for his follies and absurdities." 
 
 Speaking of Hurd, in 1759, he says : — 
 
 "Your judgment of the Dialogues will make Dr. Hurd very 
 happy. What you say of the first is so true, and was so little 
 understood by a grave London divine, that you will smile when 
 I tell you, that after having bought the book, he returned it to 
 the bookseller in a great passion against the author, as a pro- 
 fessed advocate for insincerity ." 
 
 In December, 1759, he declares he will not resign his 
 preachership at Lincoln's -Inn till there is a certainty for the 
 election of Hurd in his place. About a year afterwards we find 
 rising in his mind the idea of the remarkable charge which he 
 delivered to the clergy of Gloucester in 1761, when he had 
 become their bishop. He thinks of writing Directions for the 
 Study of Theology, " from the first elements of thinking to the 
 last sublimities of the chair;" observing that as he had seen 
 "an indisposition in the clergy to receive a few plain truths 
 because they were new, and perhaps because they were his," he 
 " would try to put them in a way to find them out for them- 
 selves," hoping, he adds, "to produce something not unnseful 
 to the younger part of my clergy, to whom on this subject you 
 may be sure I direct myself." 
 
 In the same letter he relates what he calls his "last exploit" 
 at Durham : — 
 
 
1865.] Bishop War bur ton's Unpublished Letters. 49 
 
 "The Dean and Chapter had appealed against each other to 
 the Bishop, and he had appointed his day of visitation to hear their 
 mutual complaints, who were at the utmost distance with each 
 other. The Bishop has such near connections with the Chapter 
 that their honour and his are the same ; and I found him morti- 
 fied that they were likely to become a spectacle to the gentry of 
 the country, who appeared to enjoy the quarrel. At the same 
 time he believed it impossible, from the claims as well as temper 
 of the two parties, to make it up. However, I undertook it, and 
 (though the only particular by both sides confessedly injured) 
 they agreed to refer all things to me as a common mediator, 
 which, with much labour and some difficulty, after sacrificing 
 my own resentments to peace, I at length brought to pass, before 
 I left the place, and on terms most to the honour of a mediator. 
 They agreed, with the Bishop's consent, mutually to withdraw 
 their reciprocal appeals, the Dean promising on his honour never 
 more to intrench on their rights, and they, on theirs, to hold 
 sacred his privileges and prerogatives. The conclusion was, that 
 I received their common thanks, and left them in peace and 
 cordial harmony. 
 
 " Could I ever have obtained such an interest (and I have 
 done much more to deserve it) in the benchers of Lincoln's Inn, 
 they would never, in mere politeness and good manners, have 
 suffered a forward coxcomb [Dr. Ash ton] to engage their votes 
 at a next vacancy, when they had never received from me the 
 least hint that I was disposed to leave them." Dr. Ashton, 
 having met the Attorney-General at Prior Park, had " surprised 
 him into a promise." Warburton was indignant that the 
 Attorney- General, who had professed a regard for him, had 
 allowed himself to be so entrapped, having "thus, for the sake 
 of a stranger, transgressed the most established rules of polite- 
 ness and decorum in the commerce of life." But, he says, " a 
 more exquisite revenge I could not take against men failing in 
 common civility towards me than by giving them Dr. Ashton 
 for Mr. Hurd. And if the keeper will but give our friend 
 [Hurd] a prebend, which Mr. Allen says is promised (and as 
 little wonders how it came not to be performed last vacancy), it 
 will better fit the laziness of his temper than a pulpit, though, 
 in my conscience, I believe the University of Cambridge not to 
 be out in their judgment, when they esteem Mr. Hurd one of 
 the best preachers in England." 
 
 In November, 1761, he gives us his notions of Convocation: — - 
 
 "While I am thus anxious for works of charity [in support 
 of the Gloucester Infirmary], my wiser brethren of the Convo- 
 cation are displaying their faith, and, what is more, insinuating 
 
 NEW SERIES. VOL. VII., NO. XIII. E 
 
50 Bishop JFarbarton's Unpublished Letters. [April, 
 
 their ambitious hopes to the throne. They promise the king, 
 if he will let them sit again to fight and squabble, they "will do 
 it, as Convocation has never done before, like gentlemen and 
 scholars. Had I been of the party, I should have excepted to 
 this clause; and the silence in the king's answer I think would 
 fully have justified me. "But I should not have stayed for the 
 support of my opinion ; I should have been apt to say that I had 
 two substantial objections to the clause: — 
 
 cc 1st. Because the licence of the times, which the sitting of 
 Convocation is supposed to redress, may be effectually repressed 
 by the civil law now in force. 2nd. Were the Convocation 
 allowed to sit, it would be unable, with all its canons mounted, 
 to remedy the evils complained of. 
 
 "The insolence of the Papists is righty belaboured, but why 
 does the madness of the Methodists escape scot-free? Is super- 
 stition more fatal, either to religion or government, than fana- 
 ticism ? The attacks of Popery, indeed, like those of the scorpion, 
 are silent and insidious; those of Popery, like the rattle-suake, 
 give notice of its approach. But this makes no difference 
 amongst those who are ignorant of the nature of those deadly 
 pests of society. 
 
 " The wisdom of councils, synods, and convocations, has 
 always been held, in orthodox belief, to be the wisdom that comes 
 from above; but St. Paul tells us that among the characters of 
 this species of wisdom, this stands eminent, that it is without par •- 
 tiality and without hypocrisy. But why should I be serious in 
 an age so given to banter? All the use to be made of it is to 
 afford you and me a little speculation after dinner in your 
 library. Or, whether we laugh at or lament what we cannot 
 mend, it comes to the same thing, while we equally submit in 
 either case to the superior, though not to the supernatural, 
 wisdom of our governors." 
 
 In the next letter, written in the same year, he has a few 
 more reflections on Convocation : — 
 
 "There are many truths of speculation which, in certain 
 seasons, become evils in practice. Synods are of this kind. 
 You know I contended for the right in the ' Alliance/ but 
 should have given my vote for its lving dormant till all the evil 
 
 & ■. . . JO 
 
 constellations that shed their influence on church matters were 
 past and gone. But they who pretend to believe that they were 
 the men, and not the stars, which were in fault, will satisfy 
 themselves with a more familiar instance. When you have 
 gagged a foul mouth (especially when it is of the feminine 
 gender, as I think Convocation is), if you remove the obstruction 
 before the rage and resentments of the owner have subsided, you 
 
1865.] Bishop Warburton's Unpublished Letters. 51 
 
 make a bad matter ten tiraes worse. There is now no remedy; 
 you must keep it in till she has lost the use of speech. 
 
 " I am printing a little discourse On the Office and Operations 
 of the Holy Spirit, — not in Convocation. You will ask, Quis 
 leget hcec? Vet duo vel nemo. I answer, Turpe et miser abile ! 
 I plough indeed an ungrateful soil, where the best seed will not 
 give its increase till an age or two hence." 
 
 The preceding passage contains an intimation of "the Doc- 
 trine of Grace ; J> in the following he touches on it again : 
 
 " I am calm enough to have my scruples whether what I am 
 doing, the opposing of another species of madness, fanaticism, 
 be not hurtful; for civil and religious madness may for aught I 
 know be like two counter-poisons, which, when put together and 
 suffered to work, are said to destroy one another's effects. 
 
 " My detection, for so I might call it, of this species of 
 fanaticism is yet in the press; so much has it grown upon me, 
 that I am ready to subscribe to the advice of a late celebrated 
 buffoon, ' Let none sit down and say, I will write a duodecimo.' " 
 In another passage we have a reflection on the character of 
 Bacon : — 
 
 "One Sir David Dalrymple lately sent me a small collection 
 of letters which he has inscribed to your brother, Lord Royston. 
 It is extremely curious ; but a passage in one of Bacon's to 
 King James puts the former to me in a more odious light than 
 all his other meannesses and vices put together. It is at page 
 51 : It is good to teach a parliament to work upon an edict or 
 proclamation. precedent, i.e., to make the parliament ministerial, 
 as Richelieu soon after did the parliament of P<iris. Such an 
 anecdote as this is worth a volume of chronicle. Machiavel 
 never gave so wicked nor half so able advice. Had James had 
 a faculty to comprehend the fecundity of this principle (to speak 
 in the physical language of this great man), he would have bid 
 fair for his despotic rule. But he was for having his edicts pass 
 at once for Acts of Parliament ; and they were so well supported 
 by the star chamber, that the Parliament would have thought it 
 a good compromise to be permitted to confirm them, and had 
 been easily taught, had James been as good a schoolmaster in 
 politics to his Parliament, as he was in Latin to his minister 
 Somerset, to work upon an edict or proclamation. And then 
 adieu to liberty. Such was the Attorney- General of those 
 days." 
 
 A letter written April 4, 1768, soon after the death of Sterne, 
 affords us some not unjust remarks on Sterne's character: — 
 
 " Poor Sterne, whom the papers tell us is just dead, was the 
 idol of the higher mob, who have left the care of the public to 
 
 e2 
 
52 Bishop Warburton's Unpublished Letters. [April, 
 
 Wilkes and the lower, and rather choose never to go out of 
 themselves than dishonestly to take a circuit back by the high 
 road of the public. He found a strong disposition in the many 
 to laugh away life; and, as every one makes himself, he chose 
 the office of common jester to the many. But, what is hard, he 
 never will obtain the frivolous end he aimed at, the reputation of 
 a wit, though at the expense of his character as a man, a scholar, 
 and a clergyman. But I suppose he thought with Wilkes (for 
 mischief and folly are closely allied), who, in these late tumults 
 when he was upbraided with sedition and blasphemy, in one of 
 his advertisements told the public that the essential part of his 
 character was a lover of liberty ; so poor Sterne's essential part, 
 he would tell you, was to provoke a laugh. He chose Swift for 
 his model. But Swift was either luckier or wiser, who so 
 managed his wit that he will never pass with posterity for a 
 buffoon, while Sterne gave such a loose to his buffoonery that he 
 will never pass for a wit." 
 
 In 1765, when he was revising his works, he speaks thus of 
 writing for posterity : — 
 
 "It was sympathy which first drew me to you. For kind 
 nature, foreseeing what I had to suffer from ignorance and 
 malignity in the pursuit of truth, early provided me with a 
 delightful refuge iu your knowledge and candour, which was not 
 only to recommend, but to convey, me to posterity. For I don't 
 know how it happens, but those who are suspected of looking 
 that way are always treated by their contemporaries as the 
 Samaritans treated Jesus, because his face was as though he 
 would go to Jerusalem." 
 
 In another passage he speaks thus of prospects in regard to 
 posterity : — 
 
 " I have put the last hand to the first volume of the Divine 
 Legation, and am going to launch it out for posterity ; a despe- 
 rate voyage, like that of the ancients to the Fortunate Islands, 
 for which many set out, but we hear of nobody that arrived. " 
 
 Of anecdotes he remarks : — 
 
 " It is true what you say, that anecdote has been Greek for 
 falsehood ever since the time of Procopius. But we now speak 
 plain English, and can lie without a figure." 
 
 In September, 1762, he is just about to publish the Doctrine 
 of Grace : — 
 
 " 1 am afraid you will expect more than you will find in my 
 discourse on the subject of fanaticism. I treat it less philoso- 
 phically and speculatively than practically and popularly. I 
 thought it of more use to give the picture of fanaticism in a 
 living example, Mr. J. Wesley, whose account of his apostleship 
 
 

 1865.] Bishop Warburton's Unpublished Letters, 53 
 
 I have taken from his own journals. I have examined his pre- 
 tensions to wisdom from above by every mark Scripture has given 
 of it, and compared each of these at large with Mr. J. Wesley's 
 own account of himself, in every circumstance he has delivered 
 to us of his opinions and practices. I have selected him from 
 the rest, because in parts and learning he is far superior to the 
 rest, and formed of the best stuff that nature ever put into a 
 fanatic, to make a successful head or leader of a sect. But, 
 as Milton says (as great a fanatic as Wesley, but that the fire of 
 it luckily ran all into poetry), he is fallen on evil days, very un- 
 propitious to the fortune of religious fancies." 
 
 In 1768 he speaks of a French life of Petrarch, which, 
 having heard that it was praised by Mason and Gray, he had 
 procured and read on their authority, and says that he had found 
 it very amusing, the anecdotes in particular, especially those 
 relating to Petrarch himself. " Here you will find," he observes, 
 " that good Catholics, Petrarch and his numerous correspondents, 
 as frequently call the court of Rome Babylon, as any Protestant 
 reformer has done since, and rather with more evidence, since 
 they had all those shocking enormities before their eyes which 
 the following ages had only heard of." 
 
 In the same year he describes himself as making slow pro- 
 gress with the correction of the last volume of the Divine 
 Legation, and determined to stay at home that his tardy advance 
 may not be interrupted. " For an old author, like an old 
 general, naturally grows less and less adventurous and enter- 
 prising. However, though I am unable to give that continued 
 attention that I was wont, yet I observe, perhaps too literally, 
 the painter's maxim, Nulla dies sine lined. I do not certainly 
 acquit myself of the fault that it has remained so long unfinished ; 
 yet the iniquitous treatment that I have met with from scrib- 
 blers of all denominations ought to share the blame ; that occa- 
 sioned a disgust of the pen, which a man less resolute, or less 
 convinced, had perhaps never got over." 
 
 Alluding to Wilkes, he calls him " a convict blasphemer, and 
 violator of all ties, human and divine ;" observing that he is now 
 doing for the State what Sacheverel in the reign of Queen Anne 
 did for the Church, the one being as much a disturber as the 
 other : but asking whether the people, in the days of Queen 
 Anne, would ever have followed such a character as Wilkes " for 
 their leader in patriotism ?" 
 
 Such are the extracts which we felt tempted to make from 
 the letters to the Hon. Charles Yorke. Looking into those to 
 Knapton the bookseller, we are surprised at the familiarity with 
 
54 Bishop Warburton? s Unpublished Letters. [April, 
 
 which Warburton addresses him. To persons of that class he 
 was generally very stiff and unbending. His letters to Richard- 
 son, even after he had produced Pamela, begin with " Good Sir/' 
 and end with " humble servant/' the printer being kept at a 
 distance, though the author was commended. But Knapton 
 he calls " Dear Sir/' and signs himself " ever most affectionately 
 yours/' adding expressions of concern, also, for the health and 
 happiness of Mrs. Knapton. In one of his letters he abuses 
 booksellers in general, but Knapton, he says, he " sincerely 
 loves." 
 
 In speaking of Pope, and the fact that he had not destroyed 
 the impressions of the Idea of a Patriot King, Warburton 
 observes that he might easily have given orders for destroying 
 them during his last illness, " had he been conscious of any 
 oblique or lucrative views/' but that he was restrained " by his 
 idolatrous fondness for the author," which led him, not only to 
 admire whatever he wrote, but also " to abuse many honester 
 men," because his lordship hated them. 
 
 Knapton had been attacked in some publication in the year 
 1751 ; Warburton, writing to him soon after, says, " If one had 
 one's choice, one would wish such execrable papers as the 
 magazines would meddle only with their own trash. But, since 
 they do what they please in this blessed land of liberty, one had 
 better see them impertinent than scurrilous. The public is a 
 strange machine, which by fits is as easily wound up by the 
 veriest dunce or idiot as by the best artist, nay, shall be set a 
 going so perversely, that it shall not be in the power of human 
 wisdom to reform it. It is the condition of human things that 
 the most insignificant of all animals shall do most unaccountable 
 mischief. The states of Holland had like to have been ruined 
 by a single water rat. In such a case an author has consola- 
 tion enough, because he knows justice will be done him by 
 posterity. In the mean time the bookseller has none, who may 
 have contributed as much or more than the author to oblige the 
 public." 
 
 Noticing the corrections that he made in his pages as they 
 passed through the press, he observes that they relate chiefly 
 " to the improvement of the style, or turn of the period, in 
 which," he says, " I always endeavour to be very exact, and 
 one always finds something or other of this kind to render more 
 perfect." He speaks as if he were raising his style to something 
 beyond positive perfection. 
 
 When Bolingbroke died, he said, " I believe I have lost an 
 enemy in his death, but I am sure our country has lost a 
 greater." 
 
1865.] Bishop WarburtoyCs Unpublished Letters. 55 
 
 Sixty-seven letters of Warburton to Knapton are preserved 
 in all ; but they relate mostly to matters of business, and con- 
 tain nothing of any importance to the public. 
 
 Twenty-three letters from Sir Thomas Hanmer to Warburton 
 are preserved among these papers, the first dated Dec. 24, 1735, 
 and the last May 25, 1739. Warburton's letters to Hanmer 
 were returned to Warburton at the close of their correspondence; 
 none of them are known to be extant. Nothing appears in 
 Hanraer's letters to substantiate Warburton's charge, that he 
 trafficked with his papers on Shakspeare without his knowledge. 
 Warburton was introduced to Hanmer by Sherlock, then Bishop 
 of Salisbury ; and each declared that the other was the first to 
 seek the introduction. Warburton appears to have offered his 
 papers freely, and, perhaps, at the commencement of his inter- 
 course with Hanmer, had no thought of publishing an edition 
 himself. 
 
 Hanmer, in his second letter, Jan. 1], 1736, expresses his 
 apprehensions that Warburton is thinking of bringing his obser- 
 vations to a conclusion, and that he shall in consequence ''lose 
 a very great entertainment which his weekly correspondence 
 upon that subject has afforded him." He hopes, however, that 
 he will think of a glossary, and invites him, whenever he comes 
 to Cambridge, to extend his journey to Milclenhall, which is only 
 seventeen miles distant, and spend ten days or a fortnight there; 
 or, if Warburton should be coming to London, Hanmer would 
 " bring the books," and Warburton should " run them over in a 
 few mornings" at his house. 
 
 In his third, fourth, fifth, and sixth letters, Hanmer still 
 declares his wish to see Warburton at Mildenhall, where he will 
 shew him all his emendations ; " they shall lie," he says, " open 
 before you;" aud observes that he had never so much hope of 
 seeing Shakspeare restored to purity as since Warburton had 
 promised him assistance. 
 
 In several subsequent letters, written partly from Mildenhall, 
 and partly from Wales, Hanmer acknowledges the regular 
 receipt of Warburton' s letters ; says that he cannot too often 
 repeat his thanks for those " punctual weekly returns of enter- 
 tainment and pleasure," and discusses emendations of various 
 passages. 
 
 In the fifteenth letter, dated Dec. 13, 1736, after some allu- 
 sion to a person whom Warburton accuses of having forgot the 
 rules of honour and honesty through indigence, meaning, appa- 
 rently, Theobald, Hanmer says : — 
 
 " I hear with uneasiness of the expectation which you say is 
 
56 Bishop War bur ton's Unpublished Letters. [April, 
 
 conceived of my making public the emendations and corrections 
 I have made upon Shakspeare. Nothing was further from my 
 thoughts when I began them ; I proposed nothing but amuse- 
 ment in carrying them on, and no other end but my own satis- 
 faction in getting as correct a copy as I could of an author I 
 hold in the highest esteem. But there is nothing to which my 
 mind is more averse than to become an editor ; and yet I hope 
 you will not grudge the pains you have taken in communicating 
 to me your remarks upon the same subject/' 
 
 In the eighteenth letter, April 19, 1737, he again invites 
 Warburton to Mildenhall, and in the nineteenth letter, June 
 11, 1737, he alludes to Warburton having visited him there, and 
 rejoices to hear of his safe return home : " for," says he, " as 
 I wish you at all times free from misfortunes, so I should the 
 most lament them, if from a journey undertaken from a motive 
 of kindness to me any such should happen to you." But of 
 what had passed between them during the visit, Hanmer says 
 nothing, except referring to something that Warburton had said 
 of printing and bookselling, and observing that Warburton was 
 not likely to be recompensed for an edition of Shakspeare, 
 printed in such a style as he, Hanmer, should like to see it. 
 
 Three more letters follow, in very friendly style, containing 
 remarks on various passages of Shakspeare. The last of these 
 three is dated Oct. 29, 1737, and concludes with a hope that he 
 shall have (< the favour of receiving " more emendations from 
 Warburton. 
 
 Then comes the concluding letter of all, dated Mildenhall, 
 May 25, 1739, the correspondence having been intermitted for 
 nearly a year and a half. 
 
 (t Sir, — I have received your letter, in which a new scene is 
 opened to me, a scene of complaints not quite professed, but 
 strongly implied, at the same time that I suspected nothing in 
 the world less than any discontent harboured in your mind 
 against me. I am glad now to find it proceeds altogether from 
 a mistake, for you take it for granted that I have thoughts of 
 publishing a new edition of Shakspeare, in which your informa- 
 tion, from whencesoever it came, hath much deceived you. It 
 is true that when I was last at London, partly out of curiosity, 
 but chiefly from a desire to satisfy myself whether any advan- 
 tage could be made out of it to you, I did ask some questions, 
 both of Mr. Gyles and Mr. Tonson, and desired an estimate of 
 the expense of an edition so beautified and in such a manner as 
 I thought the author deserved. If the answer had been en- 
 couraging, I intended to have communicated it to you, but the 
 consequence of the inquiry was only to convince me that far 
 
1865.] Bishop War bur ton's Unpublished Letters. 57 
 
 from a prospect of raising any benefit to you, there was no like- 
 lihood of any booksellers entering into the undertaking, even 
 though no such demand were to go along with it. You see, 
 therefore, I was not out in my conjecture that it could not be 
 made worth your while to trouble yourself in it, supposing the 
 work to be carried on in such a manner as I wished to see. 
 After this step, which I have truly related to you, I do assure 
 you I took no other, nor is anything going on towards a publica- 
 tion on my part, but my books rest quietly upon my own shelves, 
 and so they are likely to do. You have, therefore, the field open 
 and clear to you, and I wish you good success in a matter which 
 you tell me is of such great consequence to you. I am far from 
 alleging any engagements to me which should prevent you, for I 
 know of none on either side. The commerce begun and carried 
 on between us I never looked upon in any other light but as pro- 
 ceeding from an agreement in our veneration for the same author, 
 a concern to see so much good sense buried under the rubbish 
 of a most vitiated text, and a pleasure which arose to both from 
 communicating our thoughts to each other upon it. This was 
 all my motive, this my only view, and I confess I thought the 
 same had been yours too, for neither from the Bishop of Salis- 
 bury [Sherlock], nor from yourself, had I the least hint of your 
 intention towards a new edition, which you now tell me was 
 always in your mind. From my mistake in this particular, it 
 may very well be that my sentiments and answers from time to 
 time have been unsatisfactory to you, for which I now ask your 
 pardon. 
 
 " As to your demand of having your letters all returned to 
 you, I hope I shall have it in my power to comply with it. It 
 is not my custom generally to keep letters by me, but I think I 
 have kept all yours, not from an expectation I had that I should 
 ever be called upon to restore them, or should ever be made 
 responsible for them as matter of property, but because I might 
 have occasion to look over them again. If I have left none at 
 London, I shall soon find them all here, and I will get them 
 together, and send them according to the direction I have 
 received from you. 
 
 "I am, Sir, 
 
 " Your humble servant, 
 
 "Tho. Hanmer." 
 
 Thus we are left somewhat in perplexity how we ought to 
 decide between the two. Hanmer, in his letter to Dr. Joseph 
 Smith, dated Oct. 28, 1742, and given at length in Mr. Selby 
 Watson's Life of Warburton, speaks of his desire at that time 
 
58 Bishop War burton's Unpublished Letters. [April, 
 
 to publish a new edition of Shakspeare, and declares himself 
 satisfied that Warburton has no intention to publish one. He 
 also states, in the same letter, that it was Warburton who applied 
 to the Bishop of Salisbury for an introduction to him, in order 
 to communicate some notes on Shakspeare which he had still 
 lying by him, over and above those printed by Theobald ; that 
 they in consequence corresponded by letter, and that Warburton 
 visited him at Mildenhall, where he stayed about a week, and 
 had the inspection of all Hanmer's books, Hanmer having then 
 no suspicion that Warburton had any other design than that of 
 contributing to the improvement of Shakspeare' s text, an object 
 which they had both very much at heart, but that afterwards 
 views of interest began to shew themselves, Warburton dropping 
 hints of "the advantage he might receive by publishing the 
 work thus corrected ;" but that as Hanmer did not fall in with 
 Warburton's views, Warburton "flew into a great rage," and 
 demanded back his papers, upon which all intercourse between 
 them came to an end. This statement Warburton violently con- 
 tradicted, declaring that Hanmer sought the introduction from a 
 desire to profit by his annotations; that he visited Hanmer 
 after repeated requests ; that he had no resentment at Hanmer 
 until he heard that he was applying to a bookseller in London 
 about an edition, in which he was going to make use, as he told 
 the bookseller, of his (Warburton' s) notes; and that he then 
 demanded his papers back from Hanmer, who unwillingly gave 
 them up, after cavilling about his right of property in them. 
 
 From Sir Thomas Hanmer's last letter it rather appears that 
 Warburton had spoken of making Sir Thomas "responsible" 
 for his letters " as matter of property," and that Sir Thomas 
 gave them up without hesitation. The "great rage" into 
 which Warburton flew seems to have been in his letters, not at 
 any personal interview. 
 
 Certainly it is hard to believe that Hanmer, who in 1742 
 was preparing to publish his edition at Oxford, after finding 
 publication impracticable in London, had not had thoughts of 
 publishing in 1739, and had been collecting notes merely from 
 a desire to have a corrected text of Shakspeare on his own 
 shelves. But however he may have dissembled his intention to 
 publish, there is no proof that he made any use of Warburton's 
 notes without Warburton's permission. 
 
 It is observable that throughout the whole correspondence 
 there is great stiffness and ceremony towards Warburton on 
 Hanmer's part. His letters uniformly begin with " Sir," etc., 
 and end with "your obedient" or "humble servant." As to 
 his corrections of Shakspeare's text, he says of them, " 1 give 
 
1865.] Bishop War bur ton's Unpublished Letters. 59 
 
 no loose to fancy, but keep the most cautious reserve imagin- 
 able ;" but in truth they are very far from deserving this cha- 
 racter, for, they are much too venturesome, wandering away 
 from the text, and by no means justifying Johnson's opinion of 
 Hanmer's fitness for such studies. 
 
 *** These letters passed by inheritance from Mrs. War- 
 burton, the Bishop's widow, to her second husband, the Rev. 
 John Stafford Smith ; from Mr. Stafford Smith to his second 
 wife j from Mr. Stafford Smith's second wife to her nearest 
 relative, the late Miss Wolferstan, of Tamworth ; and from her 
 to her nephew, the Rev. John Mill Chanter, the present Rector 
 of Ilfracombe, who disposed of them to the British Museum. 
 There appears to be no doubt that Mrs. Warburton destroyed 
 much of the. Bishop's correspondence, especially such as had 
 any relation to private matters. 
 
 Royal Society of Literature. — Jan. 4. — J. GL Teed, Esq., Q.C., in the chair. — 
 H. B. Owen, Esq., Eev. H. Clare, A. Whitworth, Esq., and J. N. Mangles, Esq., 
 were elected Members. — Sir C. Nicholson, Bart., read a paper " On some Small 
 Egyptian Stela3 recently procured by him at Cairo." These stelae, which are six 
 in number, are formed of a soft calcareous limestone, and are about ten inches 
 square, and from sixteen to eighteen inches long. They are said to have been 
 found at Memphis. As the surface of the material is very rough, the inequali- 
 ties had to be filled up with cement before the chisel was applied to them, from 
 which circumstance, and a thick crystalline efflorescence with which they are 
 covered, it has been a matter of much difficulty to obtain a satisfactory inter- 
 pretation of the inscriptions with which they are covered. It is probable that 
 they may have once belonged to one of the several tombs which were excavated 
 by the Prussian mission in the neighbourhood of the Great Pyramid of Sakkarah. 
 Although the surface is much corroded, the traces of the sculpture are still well 
 marked, and display a style of execution not far removed from the best examples 
 of Egyptian art. Portions of the original colouring applied to the surface are 
 still discernible : the outlines are given in deep intaglio, and the forms of the 
 kneeling as well as of the standing figures, with their flowing drapery, are well 
 delineated. As far as the inscriptions can be made out, they would seem to be 
 sepulchral memorials of different officers attached to Memphis, and especially 
 of one named Mes, a name which recalls in its form that of the Jewish law-giver, 
 Moses, and which is, indeed, so transcribed by Manetho. The date of these 
 fragments is believed to be about the period of the nineteenth dynasty. 
 
( 60 ) [April, 
 
 METAPHYSICAL SCHOOLS AMONGST THE JEWS, DOWN TO 
 THE TIMES OF MOSES MAIMONIDES. 
 
 The part of M. Mimk's work which treats of Jewish philosophy, 
 is necessarily shorter than that which refers to the Arabs. If we 
 except Ibn-Gebirol, Moses Maimonides, Leo Hebraeus and a few 
 others, all the mediaeval writers of Hebrew origin were mere 
 Biblical commentators, or else they exercised their ingenuity in 
 illustrating the mysteries of Rabbinical literature. Still, however, 
 the question we are now approaching deserves to be thoroughly 
 examined, and we are fortunate in having at our disposal an 
 ample stock of materials, which we shall endeavour to condense 
 for the benefit of our readers. 
 
 The books of the Old Testament present to us no system of 
 philosophy in the generally received sense of the word ; no trace 
 can be found there of those speculations in which both the Greeks 
 and the Hindus so freely indulged; the Hebrews, as M. Munk 
 remarks, did not seek to penetrate into the secret of being ; the 
 existence of God, the spirituality of the soul, the knowledge of 
 good and evil, were with them a matter of faith, not the result 
 of a series of syllogisms. And yet, to every thinking mind, 
 the existence of evil in a world created by Him who is the 
 supreme God, must have always been a most puzzling problem. 
 How can it be admitted without seeming to impose limits upon 
 that Being from whom no evil can proceed ? And how can these 
 limits be ackuowledged without thereby denying the Unity of 
 the absolute God, — without falling into Dualism ? The answer 
 given to these questions by the Mosaic doctrine may be summed 
 up as follows : — 
 
 " Evil has no real existence : it has no place in creation, which, being 
 the work of God, cannot be at the same time the abode of evil. At each 
 period of creation God saw that it was good. Evil enters this world only 
 when intellect makes its appearance ; that is to say, at the moment when 
 man, having become an intellectual and moral being, is destined to struggle 
 against matter. A collision then takes place between the intellectual 
 principle and the material one, — and from this collision evil results ; for 
 man, gifted as he is with moral perception, and enjoying the freedom of 
 his movements, should endeavour to make his actions harmonize with the 
 supreme good; — and, if he allows himself to be conquered by matter, he 
 reduces himself to become the artizan of evil. This theory of evil, contained 
 in the third chapter of Genesis, is intimately connected with that of the 
 freedom of the will, which is one of the fundamental doctrines of Mosaism ; 
 man enjoys absolute liberty in the use of his faculties; — c life and good, 
 death and evil, are set before him ' (Deut. xxx. 15, 19). It is important 
 to bring out here, in all its force, this doctrine, in subordination to which 
 the Jews have always placed the various metaphysical speculations of 
 
1865.] Metaphysical Schools amongst the Jews. 61 
 
 foreign origin, which they embraced at different epochs. The develop- 
 ment of this theory, in its connection with Divine Providence, and with 
 the will of God, considered as the sole cause of creation, has ever been 
 deemed by Jewish teachers one of the most important topics for their 
 meditation. " a 
 
 By way of farther illustrating this remark of our author, we 
 may perhaps be allowed to quote a passage from Moses Maimo- 
 nides' tract on repentance : — 
 
 " .... It follows that the sinner himself is the cause of his own ruin ; 
 it therefore befits him to weep and lament over his sin, and [to grieve] for 
 having done this to his own soul, by dealing so wickedly with the same. 
 This is what is written [immediately] after the verse quoted above : — 
 1 Wherefore doth a living man complain? etc. (Lam. iii. 39). And then he 
 (the prophet Jeremiah) says again : — since the power [of doing good or 
 evil] is in our own hands, and since all the wicked deeds which we have 
 committed, have been committed with our [full] consciousness, it befits us 
 to turn penitently and to forsake our wickedness ; the power [of doing so] 
 being still in our hands. This is what is written [immediately] after [that 
 verse] : — ' Let us search and try our ways, and turn {again to the Lord]' 
 (Lam. iii. 40). Now, this matter is a very important principle; nay, it is 
 the pillar of the law and of the commandments, as it is said: — ' See, I 
 have set? etc.,' (Dent., ubi supra), meaning that the power [of doing good 
 or evil] is in your hands, and that any of the actions [which are within the 
 reach] of men, if one choose to do them, whether good or evil, he can. 
 And for this reason it is also said, ' that there were such a heart in them 
 (Deut. v. 29) ; by which it was meant to express, that the Creator neither 
 compels the sons of men, nor decrees that they should do [either] good or 
 evil, but that all this is left to themselves."* 
 
 We do not think it necessary to give any details in this 
 article respecting the state of Jewish theology during the golden 
 age of that nation. The observations we might make on the 
 various books of the Old Testament or on the sects of the Phari- 
 sees, Sadducees, and Essenes, would be mere repetitions or re- 
 sumes of the able disquisitions published in modern Cyclopaedias. 
 We shall therefore go on at once to the first centuries of the 
 Christian era, and consider the Jews as they stood immediately 
 after the appearance of the promised Messiah. The circumstances 
 amidst which they were thrown told most unfortunately upon 
 
 « Munk, Melanges, p. 462. 
 
 b The main principles of the Creed and Ethics of the Jews, exhibited in selections 
 from the Yad Hachazakah of Maimonides, with a translation, etc. By Hermann 
 Hedwig Bernard, pp. 264, 265. Cambridge. 1832. 8vo. Cf. Also the sum- 
 mary of the doctrine of Maimonides on " free-will," given in the notes to a Latin 
 translation of the same work . — R. Mosis Maimonidis tractatus duo : 1. " De doc- 
 trina legis, sive educations puerorum. 2nd. De natura et ratione pcenitentice apud 
 Hebrozos. Latine reddidit, etc., Bobertus Clavering. pp. 148 — 151. Oxford. 
 1705. 4to. And the Ductor Perplexorum. Part III. Cap. xvii. pp. 375—384 
 of Buxtorf's translation. 
 
62 Metaphysical Schools amongst the. Jews. [April, 
 
 intellectual culture ; in the first place the nation was absorbed 
 by the political struggles which followed the terrible catastrophe 
 of Jerusalem; and when, after the unfortunate attempt of Bar- 
 cochebas, the doctors who succeeded in escaping from the ven- 
 geance of the Romans, became convinced that Jerusalem could 
 no longer be the centre of their worship, and the head-quarters 
 of the Jewish community, their first care was to strengthen the 
 bonds which could link together as a religious society the chil- 
 dren of Abraham, throughout all the civilized world. The system 
 of the Pharisees, embraced by the majority, did not allow of 
 merely confirming the authority which belonged to the sacred 
 books; it was necessary that an equal weight should be attached 
 to traditional interpretations and developments which had till 
 then only been inculcated by oral teaching, for the few partial 
 written reproductions of these commentaries could not aspire to 
 the honours of canonicity. Such was the origin of the Mischnd 
 (SevreQCQCTLs in Justinian's Novella), which appeared during the 
 first quarter of the third century, and which it took three hun- 
 dred years to annotate, to discuss, and to amplify. At the same 
 time an immense critical undertaking was begun for the purpose 
 of fixing irrevocably the text of the sacred books from a collec- 
 tion of the most authentic MSS. ; and, in their desire for accu- 
 racy, the Rabbis went so far as to count the letters contained in 
 each book. Throughout the voluminous compilations which 
 remain to us, and which were made during the first five or six 
 centuries of the Christian era, in the Talmud as well as in the 
 allegorical interpretations of the Scriptures, there are only few 
 traces of metaphysical speculations. If we often find there re- 
 miniscences of Kabbalistic doctrines, they bear almost exclusively 
 upon angelology and exoteric points; the existence of the specu- 
 lative part of the Kabbala — a part respecting which we shall on 
 another occasion have more to say, is revealed to us merely by 
 the mention of the mysteries contained in the Bereschith or the 
 first chapter of Genesis, and in the Mercabd or visions of Ezekiel.* 
 A complete account of the Talmud, its history and its litera- 
 ture, would require a separate article, and therefore is quite 
 inconsistent with the scope of the present essay; but in order to 
 give our reader an idea of what may be called the esoteric doc- 
 trines of Rabbinism, we shall put together a few passages relat- 
 ing to the Mercabd, just mentioned. After discoursing of the 
 angels and other spiritual intelligences which occupy an inter- 
 mediate place between God and man, Maimonides says : — 
 
 " That which we have said on this subject in these two chapters, is as 
 c Munk, Melanges, pp. 469, 470. 
 

 
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