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(January, 1809.)

Letters from a late eminent Prelate to one of his Friends. 4to. pp. 380. Kidderminster: 1808.

WARBURTON, we think, was the last of our Great Divines-the last, perhaps, of any profession, among us, who united profound learning with great powers of understanding, and, along with vast and varied stores of acquired knowledge, possessed energy of mind enough to wield them with ease and activity. The days of the Cudworths and Barrows-the Hookers and Taylors, are long gone by. Among the other divisions of intellectual labour to which the progress of society has given birth, the business of reasoning, and the business of collecting knowledge, have been, in a great measure, put into separate hands. Our scholars are now little else than pedants, and antiquaries, and grammarians,-who have never exercised any faculty but memory; and our reasoners are, for the most part, but slenderly provided with learning; or, at any rate, make but a slender use of it in their reasonings. Of the two, the reasoners are by far the best off; and, upon many subjects, have really profited by the separation. Argument from authority is, in general, the weakest and the most tedious of all arguments; and learning, we are inclined to believe, has more frequently played the part of a bully than of a fair auxiliary; and been oftener used to frighten people than to convince them,-to dazzle and overawe, rather than to guide and enlighten. A modern writer would not, if he could, reason as Barrow and Cudworth often reason; and every reader, even of Warburton, must have felt that his learning often encumbers rather than assists his progress, and, like shining armour, adds more to his terrors than to his strength. The true theory of this separation may be, therefore, that scholars who are capable of reasoning, have ceased to make a parade of their scholarship; while those who have nothing else must continue to set it forwardjust as gentlemen now-a-days keep their gold in their pockets, instead of wearing it on their clothes while the fashion of laced suits still prevails among their domestics. There are individuals, however, who still think that a man of rank looks most dignified in cut velvet and embroidery, and that one who is not a gentleman can now counterfeit that appearance a little too easily. We do not presume to settle so weighty a dispute ;- -we only take the liberty of observing, that Warburton lived to see the fashion go out; and was almost the last native gentleman who appeared in a full trimmed coat.

He was not only the last of our reasoning scholars, but the last also, we think, of our powerful polemics. This breed too, we take it, is extinct;-and we are not sorry for it. Those men cannot be much regretted, who, instead of applying their great and active faculties in making their fellows better or wiser, or in promo ng mutual kindness and

cordiality among all the virtuous and enlightened, wasted their days in wrangling upon idle theories; and in applying, to the speculative errors of their equals in talents and in virtue, those terms of angry reprobation which should be reserved for vice and malignity. In neither of these characters, therefore, can we seriously lament that Warburton is not likely to have any successor.

The truth is, that this extraordinary person was a Giant in Literature-with many of the vices of the Gigantic character. Strong as he was, his excessive pride and overweening vanity were perpetually engaging him in enterprises which he could not accomplish; while such was his intolerable arrogance to wards his opponents, and his insolence towards those whom he reckoned as his inferiors, that he made himself very generally and deservedly odious, and ended by doing considerable injury to all the causes which he undertook to support. The novelty and the boldness of his manner-the resentment of his antagonists-and the consternation of his friends, insured him a considerable share of public attention at the beginning: But such was the repulsion of his moral qualities as a writer, and the fundamental unsoundness of most of his speculations, that he no sooner ceased to write, than he ceased to be read or inquired after, and lived to see those erudite volumes fairly laid on the shelf, which he fondly expected to carry down a growing fame to posterity.

The history of Warburton, indeed, is uncommonly curious, and his fate instructive. He was bred an attorney at Newark; and probably derived, from his early practice in that capacity, that love of controversy, and that habit of scurrility, for which he was afterwards distinguished. His first literary associates were some of the heroes of the Dunciad; and his first literary adventure the publication of some poems, which well entitled him to a place among those worthies. He helped "pilfering Tibbalds" to some notes upon Shakespeare; and spoke contemptuously of Mr. Pope's talents, and severely of his morals, in his letters to Concannen. He then hired his pen to prepare a volume on the Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery; and having now entered the church, made a more successful endeavour to magnify his profession, and to attract notice to himself by the publication of his once famous book on "the Alliance between Church and State," in which all the presumption and ambition of his nature was first made manifest.

By this time, however, he seems to have passed over from the party of the Dunces to that of Pope; and proclaimed his conversion pretty abruptly, by writing an elaborate de [fence of the Essay on Man, from some imputa

tions which had been thrown on its theology | a victory, which is now generally adjudged in and morality. Pope received the services of his opponents. The object of "the Divine this voluntary champion with great gratitude; Legation," for instance, is to prove that the and Warburton having now discovered that mission of Moses was certainly from God,—. he was not only a great poet, but a very honest because his system is the only one which man, continued to cultivate his friendship with does not teach the doctrine of a future state great assiduity, and with very notable success: of rewards and punishments! And the obFor Pope introduced him to Mr. Murray, who ject of "the Alliance" is to show, that the made him preacher at Lincoln's Inn, and to church (that is, as he explains it, all the adMr. Allen of Prior Park, who gave him his herents of the church of England) is entitled niece in marriage, obtained a bishopric for to a legal establishment, and the protection of him,—and left him his whole estate. In the a test law,-because it constitutes a separate mean time, he published his "Divine Lega- society from that which is concerned in the tion of Moses,"the most learned, most arro- civil government, and, being equally sovereign gant, and most absurd work, which had been and independent, is therefore entitled to treat produced in England for a century-and his with it on a footing of perfect equality. The editions of Pope, and of Shakespeare, in which sixth book of Virgil, we are assured, in the he was scarcely less outrageous and fantas- same peremptory manner, contains merely tical. He replied to some of his answerers in the description of the mysteries of Eleusis; a style full of insolence and brutal scurrility; and the badness of the New Testament Greek and not only poured out the most tremendous a conclusive proof both of the eloquence and abuse on the infidelities of Bolingbroke and the inspiration of its authors. These fancies, Hume, but found occasion also to quarrel it appears to us, require no refutation; and, with Drs. Middleton, Lowth, Jortin, Leland, and indeed almost every name distinguished for piety and learning in England. At the same time, he indited the most highflown adulation to Lord Chesterfield, and contrived to keep himself in the good graces of Lord Mansfield and Lord Hardwicke ;-while, in the midst of affluence and honours, he was continually exclaiming against the barbarity of the age in rewarding genius so frugally, and in not calling in the aid of the civil magistrate to put down fanaticism and infidelity. The public, however, at last, grew weary of these blustering novelties. The bishop, as old age stole upon him, began to doze in his mitre; and though Dr. Richard Hurd, with the true spirit of an underling, persisted in keeping up the petty traffic of reciprocal encomiums, yet Warburton was lost to the public long before he sunk into dotage, and lay dead as an author for many years of his natural existence.

We have imputed this rapid decline of his reputation, partly to the unsoundness of his general speculations, and chiefly to the of fensiveness of his manner. The fact is admitted even by those who pretend to regret it; and, whatever Dr. Hurd may have thought, it must have had other causes than the decay of public virtue and taste.

In fact, when we look quietly and soberly over the vehement and imposing treatises of Warburton, it is scarcely possible not to perceive, that almost every thing that is original in his doctrine or propositions is erroneous; and that his great gifts of learning and argumentation have been bestowed on a vain attempt to give currency to untenable paradoxes. His powers and his skill in controversy may indeed conceal, from a careless reader, the radical fallacy of his reasoning; and as, in the course of the argument, he frequently has the better of his adversaries upon incidental and collateral topics, and never fails to make his triumph resound over the whole field of battle, it is easy to understand how he should, for a while, have got the credit of

dazzled and astonished as we are at the rich and variegated tissue of learning and argument with which their author has invested their extravagance, we conceive that no man of a sound and plain understanding can ever mistake them for truths, or waver, in the least degree, from the conviction which his own reflection must afford of their intrinsic absurdity.

We

The case is very nearly the same with his subordinate general propositions; which, in so far as they are original, are all brought forward with the parade of great discoveries, and yet appear to us among the most futile and erroneous of modern speculations. are tempted to mention two, which we think we have seen referred to by later writers with some degree of approbation, and which, at any rate, make a capital figure in all the fundamental philosophy of Warburton. The one relates to the necessary imperfection of human laws, as dealing in Punishments only, and not in Rewards also. The other concerns his notion of the ultimate foundation of moral Obligation.

The very basis of his argument for the necessity of the doctrine of a future state to the well-being of society, is, that, by human laws, the conduct of men is only controlled by the fear of punishment, and not excited by the hope of reward. Both these sanctions however, he contends, are necessary to regulate our actions, and keep the world in order; and, therefore, legislators, not finding rewards in this world, have always been obliged to connect it with a future world, in which they have held out that they would be bestowed on all deservers. It is scarcely possible, we believe, to put this most important doctrine on a more injudicious foundation; and if this were the only ground either for believing or inculcating the doctrine of a future state, we should tremble at the advantages which the infidel would have in the contest. We shall not detain our readers longer, than just to point out three obvious fallacies in this, the most vaunted and confident, perhaps, of all

motives; but it is a rash, a presumptuous, and, we think, a most shortsighted and narrow view of the case, to suppose, that it is chiefly the impossibility of rewarding virtue on Earth, that has led legislators to secure the peace of society, by referring it for its recompense to Heaven.

the Warburtonian dogmata. In the first place, [ishment, it evidently would not add to its perit is obvious that disorders in society can fection, to make it also the distributer of rescarcely be said to be prevented by the hope wards; unless it could be shown, that a simiof future rewards: the proper use of that doc-lar disorder was likely to arise from leaving trine being, not to repress vice, but to console these to the individuals affected. It is obaffliction. Vice and disorder can only be vious, however, not only that there is no likequelled by the dread of future punishment-lihood of such a disorder, but that such an whether in this world or the next; while it is interference would be absurd and impractica obvious that the despondency and distress ble. It is true, therefore, that human laws which may be soothed by the prospect of do in general provide punishments only, and future bliss, are not disorders within the pur- not rewards; but it is not true that they are, view of the legislator. In the second place, on this account, imperfect or defective; or it is obviously not true that human laws are that human conduct is not actually regulated necessarily deficient in the article of providing by the love of happiness, as much as by the rewards. In many instances, their enact- dread of suffering. The doctrine of a future ments have this direct object; and it is ob-state adds, no doubt, prodigiously to both these vious, that if it was thought essential to the well-being of society, they might reward quite as often as they punish. But, in the third place, the whole argument proceeds upon a gross and unaccountable misapprehension of the nature and object of legislation;-a very brief explanation of which will show, both that the temporal rewards of virtue are just The other dogma to which we alluded, is as sure as the temporal punishments of vice, advanced with equal confidence and pretenand at the same time explain why the law sions; and is, if possible, still more shallow has so seldom interfered to enforce the for- and erroneous. Speculative moralists had mer. The law arose from human feelings been formerly contented with referring moral and notions of justice; and those feelings and obligation, either to a moral sense, or to a notions, were, of course, before the law, which perception of utility;-Warburton, without only came in aid of their deficiency. The much ceremony, put both these together: natural and necessary effect of kind and vir- But his grand discovery is, that even this tie tuous conduct is, to excite love, gratitude, is not strong enough; and that the idea of and benevolence-the effect of injury and moral obligation is altogether incomplete and vice is to excite resentment, anger, and re-imperfect, unless it be made to rest also on venge. While there was no law and no magistrate, men must have acted upon those feelings, and acted upon them in their whole extent. He who rendered kindness, received kindness; and he who inflicted pain and suffering, was sooner or later overtaken by retorted pain and suffering. Virtue was rewarded therefore, and vice punished, at all times; and both, we must suppose, in the same measure and degree. The reward of virtue, however, produced no disturbance or disorder; and, after society submitted to regulation, was very safely left in the hands of gratitude and sympathetic kindness. But it was far otherwise with the punishment of vice, Resentment and revenge tended always to a dangerous excess, -were liable to be as- Why are we bound by the will of a supesumed as the pretext for unprovoked aggres- rior?-evidently for no other reason, than besion, and, at all events, had a tendency to cause superiority implies a power to affect our reproduce revenge and resentment, in an in- happiness; and the expression of will assures terminable series of violence and outrage. us, that our happiness will be affected by our The law, therefore, took this duty into its own disobedience. An obligation is something hands. It did not invent, or impose for the which constrains or induces us to act;-but first time, that sanction of punishment, which there neither is nor can be any other motive was coeval with vice and with society, and for the actions of rational and sentient beings, is implied, indeed, in the very notion of in- than the love of happiness. It is the desire jury-it only transferred the right of apply- of happiness-well or ill understood-seen ing it from the injured individual to the pub- widely or narrowly,—that necessarily dictates lic; and tempered its application by more all our actions, and is at the bottom of all our impartial and extensive views of the circum- conceptions of morality or duty: and the will stances of the delinquency. But if the pun-of a superior can only constitute a ground of ishment of vice be not ultimately derived from obligation, by connecting itself with this sinlaw, neither is the reward of virtue; and al-gle and universal agent. If it were possible though human passions made it necessary for to disjoin the idea of our own happiness or law to undertake the regulation of that pun- suffering from the idea of a superior, it is ob

the Will of a Superior. There is no point in all his philosophy, of which he is more vain than of this pretended discovery; and he speaks of it, we are persuaded, twenty times, without once suspecting the gross fallacy which it involves." The fallacy is not, however, in stating an erroneous proposition-for it is certainly true, that the command of a superior will generally constitute an obligation: it lies altogether in supposing that this is a separate or additional ground of obligation,-and in not seeing that this vaunted discovery of a third principle for the foundation of morality, was in fact nothing but an individual instance or exemplification of the principle of utility.

A second, and perhaps, a still more formdable mischief, arose from the discredit which was brought on the priesthood, and indeed upon religion in general, by this interchange of opprobrious and insulting accusations among its ministers. If the abuse was justifiable, then the church itself gave shelter to folly and wickedness, at least as great as was to be found under the banners of infidelity;—if it was not justifiable, then it was apparent, that abuse by those holy men was no proof of demerit in those against whom it was directed; and the unbelievers, of course, were furnished with an objection to the sincerity of those invectives of which they themselves were the objects.

vious, that we should no longer be under any in the fields of controversy. Fortunately, obligation to conform to the will of that supe- their example has not been generally followrior. If we should be equally secure of hap-ed; and the sect itself, though graced with piness in mind and in body-in time and in mitres, and other trophies of worldly success, eternity, by disobeying his will, as by com- has perished, we think, in consequence of the plying with it, it is evidently altogether incon- experiment. ceivable, that the expression of that will should impose any obligation upon us: And although it be true that we cannot suppose such a case, it is not the less a fallacy to represent the will of a superior as a third and additional ground of obligation, newly discovered by this author, and superadded to the old principle of a regard to happiness, or utility. We take these instances of the general unsoundness of all Warburton's peculiar doctrines, from topics on which he is generally supposed to have been less extravagant than on any other. Those who wish to know his feats in criticism, may be referred to the Canons of Mr. Edwards; and those who admire the originality of his Dissertation on the Mysteries, are recommended to look into the Eleusis of Meursius. Speculations like these could never be popular; and were not likely to attract the attention, even of the studious, longer than their novelty, and the glare of erudition and originality which was thrown around them, protected them from deliberate consideration. But the real cause of the public alienation from the works of this writer, is undoubtedly to be found in the revolting arrogance of his general manner, and the offensive coarseness of his controversial invectives. These, we think, must be confessed to be somewhat worse than mere error in reasoning, or extravagance in theory. They are not only offences of the first magnitude against good taste and good manners, but are likely to be attended with pernicious consequences in matters of much higher importance. Though we are not disposed to doubt of the sincerity of this reverend person's abhorrence for vice and infidelity, we are seriously of opinion, that his writings have been substantially prejudicial to the cause of religion and morality; and that it is fortunate for both, that they have now fallen into general oblivion.

This applies to those indecent expressions of violence and contempt, in which Warburton and his followers were accustomed to indulge, when speaking of their Christian and clerical opponents. But the greatest evil of all, we think, arose from the intemperance, coarseness, and acrimony of their remarks, even on those who were enemies to revelation. There is, in all well-constituted minds, a natural feeling of indulgence towards those errors of opinion, to which, from the infirmity of human reason, all men are liable, and of compassion for those whose errors have endangered their happiness. It must be the natural tendency of all candid and liberal persons, therefore, to regard unbelievers with pity, and to reason with them with mildness and forbearance. Infidel writers, we conceive, may generally be allowed to be actual unbelievers; for it is difficult to imagine what other motive than a sincere persuasion of the truth of their opinions, could induce them to become objects of horror to the respectable part of any community, by their disclosure. From what vices of the heart, or from what defects in the understanding, their unbelief may have originatThey have produced, in the first place, all ed, it may not always be easy to determine; the mischief of a conspicuous, and, in some but it seems obvious that, for the unbelief itsense, a successful example of genius and self, they are rather to be pitied than reviled: learning, associated with insolence, intoler- and that the most effectual way of persuading ance, and habitual contumely and outrage. the public that their opinions are refuted out All men who are engaged in controversy are of a regard to human happiness, is to treat apt enough to be abusive and insulting, and their author (whose happiness is most in danclergymen, perhaps, rather more apt than ger) with some small degree of liberality and others. It is an intellectual warfare, in which, gentleness. It is also pretty generally taken as in other wars, it is natural, we suspect, to for granted, that a very angry disputant is be ferocious, unjust, and unsparing; but ex- usually in the wrong; that it is not a sign of perience and civilisation have tempered this much confidence in the argument, to take advehemence, by gentler and more generous vantage of the unpopularity or legal danger maxims, and introduced a law of honourable of the opposite doctrine; and that, when an hostility, by which the fiercer elements of our unsuccessful and unfair attempt is made to nature are mastered and controlled. No great-discredit the general ability or personal worth er evil, perhaps, can be imagined, than the of an antagonist, no great reliance is underviolation of this law from any quarter of influ- stood to be placed on the argument by which ence and reputation ;-yet the Warburtonians he may be lawfully opposed. may be said to have used their best endeavours to introduce the use of poisoned weapons, and to abolish the practice of giving quarter,

It is needless to apply these observations to the case of the Warburtonian controversies. There is no man, we believe, however he may

mess, he disables both the judgment and the candour of his instructor, and conceives a strong prejudice in favour of the cause which has been attacked in a manner so unwarrantable.

We have had occasion, oftener than once, to trace an effect like this, from this fierce and overbearing aspect of orthodoxy;-and we appeal to the judgment of all our readers, whether it be not the very effect which it is calculated to produce on all youthful minds of any considerable strength and originality. It is to such persons, however, and to such only, that the refutation of infidel writers ought to be addressed. There is no need to

use of the learned and orthodox part of the English clergy. Such works are necessarily supposed to be intended for the benefit of young persons, who have either contracted some partiality for those seductive writers, or are otherwise in danger of being misled by them. It is to be presumed, therefore, that they know and admire their real excellences;

and it might consequently be inferred, that they will not listen with peculiar complacency to a refutation of their errors, which sets out with a torrent of illiberal and unjust abuse of their talents and characters.

be convinced of the fallacy and danger of the principles maintained by Lord Bolingbroke, by Voltaire, or by Hume, who has not felt indignation and disgust at the brutal violence, the affected contempt, and the flagrant unfairness with which they are treated by this learned author,-who has not, for a moment, taken part with them against so ferocious and insulting an opponent, and wished for the mortification and chastisement of the advocate, even while impressed with the greatest veneration for the cause. We contemplate this scene of orthodox fury, in short, with something of the same emotions with which we should see a heretic subjected to the torture, or a freethinker led out to the stake by a zeal-write books against Hume and Voltaire for the ous inquisitor. If this, however, be the effect of such illiberal violence, even on those whose principles are settled, and whose faith is confirmed by habit and reflection, the consequences must obviously be still more pernicious for those whose notions of religion are still uninformed and immature, and whose minds are open to all plausible and liberal impressions. Take the case, for instance, of a young man, who has been delighted with the eloquence of Bolingbroke, and the sagacity and ingenuity of Hume;-who knows, moreover, that the one lived in intimacy with Pope, and Swift, and Atterbury, and almost all the worthy and eminent persons of his time;and that the other was the cordial friend of Robertson and Blair, and was irreproachably correct and amiable in every relation of life; -and who, perceiving with alarm the tendency of some of their speculations, applies to Warburton for an antidote to the poison he may have imbibed. In Warburton he will then read that Bolingbroke was a paltry drivellerVoltaire a pitiable scoundrel-and Hume a puny dialectician, who ought to have been set on the pillory, and whose heart was as base and corrupt as his understanding was contemptible! Now, what, we would ask any man of common candour and observation, is the effect likely to be produced on the mind of any ingenious and able young man by this style of confutation? Infallibly to make him take part with the reviled and insulted literati, -to throw aside the right reverend confuter with contempt and disgust,-and most probably to conceive a fatal prejudice against the cause of religion itself-thus unhappily associated with coarse and ignoble scurrility. He must know to a certainty, in the first place, These desultory observations have carried that the contempt of the orthodox champion is us so completely away from the book, by the either affected, or proceeds from most gross title of which they were suggested, that we ignorance and incapacity;-since the abilities have forgotten to announce to our readers, of the reviled writers is proved, not only by that it contains a series of familiar letters, adhis own feeling and experience, but by the dressed by Warburton to Doctor (afterwards suffrage of the public and of all men of intel- Bishop) Hurd, from the year 1749, when their ligence. He must think, in the second place, acquaintance commenced, down to 1776, when that the imputations on their moral worth are the increasing infirmities of the former put a false and calumnious, both from the fact of stop to the correspondence. Some little use their long friendship with the purest and most was made of these letters in the life of his exalted characters of their age, and from the friend, which Bishop Hurd published, after a obvious irrelevancy of this topic in a fair refu- very long delay, in 1794; but the treasure was tation of their errors;-and then, applying the hoarded up, in the main, till the death of that ordinary maxims by which we judge of a dis- prelate; soon after which, the present volume putant's cause, from his temper and his fair-was prepared for publication, in obedience to

We are convinced, therefore, that the bully. ing and abusive tone of the Warburtonian school, even in its contention with infidels, has done more harm to the cause of religion, and alienated more youthful and aspiring minds from the true faith, than any other error into which zeal has ever betrayed orthodoxy. It may afford a sort of vindictive delight to the zealots who stand in no need of the instruction of which it should be the vehicle; but it will, to a certainty, revolt and disgust all those to whom that instruction was necessary,-enlist all the generous feelings of their nature on the side of infidelity,—and make piety and reason itself appear like prejudice and bigotry. We think it fortunate, therefore, upon the whole, that the controver sial writings of Warburton have already passed into oblivion,-since, even if we thought more highly than we do of the substantial merit of his arguments, we should still be of opinion that they were likely to do more mischief than the greater part of the sophistries which it was their professed object to counteract and discredit.

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