Page images
PDF
EPUB

of mind enough to wield them with ease and activity. The days of the Cudworths and Barrows-the Hookers and Taylors, are 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 reasoning. 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 forward-just 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 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 regreted, who, instead of applying their great and active faculties in making their fellows better or wiser, or in promoting 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,

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 towards his opponents, and his insolence towards those whom he reckoned as his inferiors, that he made himself very generally and deserv edly odious, and ended by doing considerable injury to the cause which he intended 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.

[ocr errors]

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 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 defence of the Essay on Man, from some imputations which had been thrown on its theology and morality. Pope received the services of this voluntary champion with great gratitude; and Warburton having now discovered that he was not only a great poet, but a very honest man, continued to cultivate his friendship with great assiduity, and with very notable success; for Pope introduced him to Mr Murray, who

VOL. XIII. NO. 26.

Z

made

made him preacher at Lincoln's Inn, and to Mr Allen of PriorPark, who gave him his niece in marriage,-obtained a bishopric for him, and left him his whole estate. In the mean time, he published his Divine Legation of Moses, the most learned, most arrogant, and most absurd work, which has been produced in England for a century;-and his editions of Pope, and of Shakespeare, in which he was scarcely less outrageous and fantastical. He replied to some of his answerers in a style full of insolence and brutal scurrility; and not only poured out the most tremendous abuse on the infidelities of Bolingbroke and Hume, but found occasion to quarrel 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 offensiveness 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 lock quietly and foberly over the vehement and impofing treatifes of Warburton, it is fcarcely poffible not to perceive, that almost every thing that is original in his doctrine or propofitions 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 controverfy may indeed conceal, from a careleis reader, the radical fallacy of his reafoning; and as, in the course of the argument, he frequently has the better of his adverfaries upon incidental and collateral topics, and never fails to make his triumph refound over the whole field of battle, it is eafy to understand how he should, for a while, have got the credit of a victory, which is now generally adjudged to his opponents. The object of the

Divine Legation,' for inftance, is to prove, that the miffion of Mofes was certainly from God,—because his fyftem is the only one which does not teach the doctrine of a future ftate of rewards and punishments! And the object of the Alliance' is to fhow, that the church (that is, as he explains it, all the adherents of the church of England) is entitled to a legal establishment, and the protection of a test law,-because it conftitutes a separate society from that which is concerned in the civil government, and, being g equally fovereign and independent, is therefore entitled to treat with it on a footing of perfect equality. The fixth book of Virgil, we are told, in like manner, contains merely the description of the mysteries of Eleufis; and the badness of the New Testament Greek is a conclufive proof of the eloquence and infpiration of its authors. These fancies, it appears to us, require no refutation; and, dazzled and astonished as we are at the rich and variegated tiffue of learning and argument with which their author has invested their extravagance, we conceive that no man of a found and plain understanding can ever mistake them for truths, or waver, in the leaft degree, from the conviction which his own reflection must afford of their abfurdity.

The cafe is very nearly the fame with his fubordinate general propofitions, which, in fo far as they are original, are all brought forward with the parade of great difcoveries, and yet appear to us among the most futile and erroneous of modern fpeculations. We are tempted to mention two, which we think we have feen referred to by later writers with fome degree of approbation, and which, at any rate, make a capital figure in all the fundamental philofophy of Warburton, The one relates to the neceffary 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 bafis of his argument for the neceffity of the doctrine of a future ftate to the well-being of fociety, is, that, by human laws, the conduct of men is only controuled by the fear of punishment, and not excited by the hope of reward. Both these fanctions, however, he contends, are neceffary to regulate our actions, and keep the world in order; and therefore, legiflators, 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 defervers. It is fcarcely poffible, 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 ftate, we fhould tremble at the advantages which the infidel would have in the conteft. We fhall not detain our readers longer, than just to point out three obvious fallacies in this,

[ocr errors]

the

the most vaunted and confident, perhaps, of all the Warburtonian dogmata. In the first place, it is obvious that disorders in fociety can scarcely be faid to be prevented by the hope of future rewards. The proper use of that doctrine is, not to reprefs vice, but to confole affliction. Vice and disorder are quelled by the dread of future punishment. The defpondency and diftrefs that are soothed by the profpect of future blifs, are not disorders within the purview of the legiflator. In the second place, it is obviously not true that human laws are necessarily deficient in the article of providing rewards. In many inftances, their enactments have this direct object; and it is obvious, that if it was thought effential to the well-being of fociety, they might reward as often as they punish. But, in the third place, the whole argument proceeds upon a grofs and unaccountable misapprehension of the nature and object of legislation ;-a very brief explanation of which will fhow, both that the temporal rewards of virtue are juft as fure as the temporal punishments of vice, and at the fame time explain why the law has fo feldom interfered to enforce the former. The law arofe from human feelings and notions of justice; and thofe feelings and notions were, of course, before the law. The natural and neceffary effect of kind and virtuous conduct is, to excite love, gratitude, and benevolence;-the effect of injury and vice is to excite refentment, anger, and revenge. While there was no law and no magiftrate, men must have acted upon those feelings, and acted upon them in their whole extent. He who rendered kindness, received kindnefs; and he who inflicted pain and fuffering, was fooner or later overtaken by retorted pain and fuffering. Virtue was rewarded therefore, and vice punished, at all times; and both, we must fuppofe, in the fame measure and degree. The reward of virtue, however, produced no disturbance or diforder; and, after fociety fubmitted to regulation, was fafely left in the hands of gratitude and fympathetic kindness. It was otherwife with the punishment of vice. Refentment and revenge tended always to a dangerous excefs,-were liable to be affumed as the pretext for unprovoked aggreffion, and, at all events, had a tendency to reproduce revenge and refentment, in an interminable series of violence and outrage. The law, therefore, took this duty into its own hands. It did not invent, or impofe for the first time, that fanction of punishment which was coeval with vice and with fociety, and is implied, indeed, in the very notion of injury-it only transferred the right of applying it from the injured individual to the public; and tempered its application by more impartial and extenfive views of the circumftances of the delinquency. But if the punishment of vice be not ultimately derived from law, neither is the reward of virtue; and although

human

« PreviousContinue »