Note 182 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS;

The paradoxical title of his great work was evidently designed to attract the unwary. “The Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated—from the omission of a future state!” It was long uncertain whether it was “a covert attack on Christianity, instead of a defence of it.” I have here no concern with Warburton’s character as a polemical theologist; this has been the business of that polished and elegant scholar, Bishop Lowth, who has shown what it is to be in Hebrew literature “a Quack in Commentatorship, and a Mountebank in Criticism.” He has fully entered into all the absurdity of Warburton’s “ill-starred Dissertation on Job.” It is curious to observe that Warburton in the wild chase of originality, often too boldly took the bull by the horns, for he often adopted the very reasonings and objections of infidels!—for instance, in arguing on the truth of the Hebrew text, because the words had no points when a living language, he absolutely prefers the Koran for correctness! On this Lowth observes: “You have been urging the same argument that Spinoza employed, in order to destroy the authority of the Hebrew Scriptures, and to introduce infidelity and atheism.” Lowth shows further, that “this was also done by ‘a society of gentlemen,’ in their ‘Sacerdotism Displayed,’ said to be written by ‘a select committee of the Deists and Freethinkers of Great Britain,’ whose author Warburton himself had represented to be ‘the forwardest devil of the whole legion.’” Lowth, however, concludes that all the mischief has arisen only from “your lordship’s undertaking to treat of a subject with which you appear to be very much unacquainted.”—Lowth’s Letter, p. 91.