Part 8 (2/2)

[Footnote 151: See Warburton's Letters to Hurd, Letter XVIII. January 30, 1749-50.]

[Footnote 152: See Warburton's _Dedication of the Divine Legation of Moses to the Freethinkers_. Jeffery, another contemporary, writes to the same effect.]

[Footnote 153: _Sensus Communis_ (on the Freedom of Wit and Humour), -- 4.]

[Footnote 154: Hoadly in one sense may be regarded as a 'Freethinker'

himself; but it was the very fact that he was so which made him resent Collins's perversion of the term. The first of his 'Queries to the Author of a Discourse of Freethinking' is 'Whether that can be justly called Freethinking which is manifestly thinking with the utmost slavery; and with the strongest prejudices against every branch, and the very foundation of all religion?'--Hoadly's _Works_, vol. i.]

[Footnote 155: 'Conybeare, dessen Vertheidigung der geoffenbarten Religion die gediegenste Gegenschrift ist, die gegen Tindal erschien. Es ist eine logische Klarheit, eine Einfachheit der Darstellung, eine uberzeugende Kraft der Beweisfuhrung, ein einleuchtender Zusammenhang des Ganzen verbunden mit wurdiger Haltung der Polemik, philosophischer Bildung und freier Liberalitat des Standpunkts in diesem Buch, vermoge welcher es als meisterhaft anerkannt werden muss.'--Lechler's _Geschichte des Englischen Deismus_, p. 362. Warburton calls Conybeare's one of the best reasoned books in the world.]

[Footnote 156: See Watson's _Life of Warburton_, p. 293.]

[Footnote 157: _Ibid._ iii. 133, 190, 201, 261.]

[Footnote 158: _Enquiry into the Ground and Foundation of the Christian Religion_, p. 59.]

[Footnote 159: See _Enquiry concerning Redemption_.]

[Footnote 160: See his _Discourse concerning Reason_, p. 23, and his _Reflections upon the comparative excellence and usefulness of Moral and Positive Duties_, p. 27, &c.]

[Footnote 161: His letters on the 'Study of History' contain the same principles.]

[Footnote 162: Pattison's 'Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750,' in _Essays and Reviews_.]

[Footnote 163: 'There is a book called _The Moral Philosopher_ lately published. Is it looked into? I should hope not, merely for the sake of the taste, the sense, and learning of the present age.... I hope n.o.body will be so indiscreet as to take notice publicly of the book, though it be only in the f.a.g end of an objection.--It is that indiscreet conduct in our defenders of religion that conveys so many worthless books from hand to hand.'--Letter to Mr. Birch in 1737. In Nichols' _Literary Ill.u.s.trations of the Eighteenth Century_, ii. 70.]

[Footnote 164: See Charles Churchill's lines on Warburton in _The Duellist_. After much foul abuse, he thus describes _The Divine Legation_:--

To make himself a man of note, He in defence of Scripture wrote.

So long he wrote, and long about it, That e'en believers 'gan to doubt it!

A gentleman well-bred, if breeding Rests in the article of reading; A man of this world, for the next Was ne'er included in his text,' &c. &c.

Gibbon calls _The Divine Legation_ 'a monument, already crumbling in the dust, of the vigour and weakness of the human mind.'--See _Life of Gibbon_, ch. vii. 223, note. Bishop Lowth says of it ironically, '_The Divine Legation_, it seems, contains in it all knowledge, divine and human, ancient and modern; it treats as of its proper subject, de omni scibili et de quolibet ente; it is a perfect encyclopaedia; it includes in itself all history, chronology, criticism, divinity, law, politics,'

&c. &c.--_A Letter to the Right Rev. Author of 'The Divine Legation,'_ p. 13 (1765).]

[Footnote 165: There were two anti-Deistical writers of the name of Chandler, (1) the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, and (2) Dr. Samuel Chandler, an eminent Dissenter. Both wrote against Collins, but the latter also against Morgan and the anonymous author of the _Resurrection of Jesus considered_.

Sherlock's _Tryal of the Witnesses_ ought perhaps to have been noticed as one of the works of permanent value written against the Deists.

Wharton says that 'Sherlock's _Discourses on Prophecy and Trial of the Witnesses_ are, perhaps, the best defences of Christianity in our language.' Sherlock's lawyer-like mind enabled him to manage the controversy with rare skill, but the tone of theological thought has so changed, that his once famous book is a little out of date at the present day. Judged by its intrinsic merits, William Law's answer to Tindal would also deserve to be ranked among the very best of the books which were written against the Deists; but like almost all the works of this most able and excellent man, it has fallen into undeserved oblivion. Leslie's _Short and Easy Method with a Deist_ is also admirable in its way.]

[Footnote 166: But it is no want of charity to say that his Roman Catholicism sat very lightly upon him. He himself confesses it in a letter to Atterbury.]

[Footnote 167: Pope was also clearly influenced by Shaftesbury's arguments that virtue was to be practised and sin avoided, not for fear of punishment or hope of reward, but for their own sakes. Witness the verse in the Universal Prayer:--

'What conscience dictates to be done, Or warns me not to do, This teach me _more than_ h.e.l.l to shun, That _more than_ heaven pursue.']

[Footnote 168: See Hunt's _History of Religious Thought in England_, vol. ii. p. 369, and Lechler's _Geschichte des Englischen Deismus_, p.

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