Note 149 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS;

I have given a tempered opinion of his motive for this sudden conversion from Attorneyship to Divinity; for it must not be concealed, in our inquiry into Warburton’s character, that he has frequently been accused of a more worldly one. He was so fierce an advocate for some important causes he undertook, that his sincerity has been liable to suspicion; the pleader, in some points, certainly acting the part of a sophist. Were we to decide by the early appearances of his conduct, by the rapid change of his profession, by his obsequious servility to his country squire, and by what have been termed the hazardous “fooleries in criticism, and outrages in controversy,” which he systematically pursued, he looks like one not in earnest; and more zealous to maintain the character of his own genius, than the cause he had espoused. Leland once exclaimed, “What are we to think of the writer and his intentions? Is he really sincere in his reasonings?” Certain it is, his paradoxes often alarmed his friends, to repeat the words of a great critic, by “the absurdity of his criticism, the heterodoxy of his tenets, and the brutality of his invectives.” Our Juvenal, who, whatever might be the vehemence of his declamation, reflected always those opinions which floated about him, has drawn a full-length figure. He accounts for Warburton’s early motive in taking the cassock, as being

“——————thereto drawn By some faint omens of the Lawn, And on the truly Christian plan, To make himself a gentleman: A title, in which Form arrayed him, Tho’ Fate ne’er thought of when she made him. 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. He wrote too of the Holy Ghost; Of whom, no more than doth a post, He knew; nor, should an angel show him, Would he or know, or choose to know him.” Churchill’s “Duellist.”

I would not insinuate that Warburton is to be ranked among the class he so loudly denounced, that of “Free-thinkers;” his mind, warm with imagination, seemed often tinged with credulity. But from his want of sober-mindedness, we cannot always prove his earnestness in the cause he advocated. He often sports with his fancies; he breaks out into the most familiar levity; and maintains, too broadly, subtile and refined principles, which evince more of the political than the primitive Christian. It is certain his infidelity was greatly suspected; and Hurd, to pass over the stigma of Warburton’s sudden conversion to the Church, insinuates that “an early seriousness of mind determined him to the ecclesiastical profession.”—“It may be so,” says the critic in the “Quarterly Review,” no languid admirer of this great man; “but the symptoms of that seriousness were very equivocal afterwards; and the certainty of an early provision, from a generous patron in the country, may perhaps be considered by those who are disposed to assign human conduct to ordinary motives, as quite adequate to the effect.”

Dr. Parr is indignant at such surmises; but the feeling is more honourable than the decision! In an admirable character of Warburton in the “Westminster Magazine” for 1779, it is acknowledged, “at his outset in life he was suspected of being inclined to infidelity; and it was not till many years had elapsed, that the orthodoxy of his opinions was generally assented to.” On this Dr. Parr observes, “Why Dr. Warburton was ever suspected of secret infidelity I know not. What he was inclined to think on subjects of religion, before, perhaps, he had leisure or ability to examine them, depends only upon obscure surmise, or vague report.” The words inclined to think seems a periphrase for secret infidelity. Our critic attributes these reports to “an English dunce, whose blunders and calumnies are now happily forgotten, and repeated by a French buffoon, whose morality is not commensurate with his wit.”—Tracts by Warburton, &c., p. 186.

“The English Dunce” I do not recollect; of this sort there are so many! Voltaire is “the French buffoon;” who, indeed, compares Warburton in his bishopric, to Peachum in the Beggar’s Opera—who, as Keeper of Newgate, was for hanging all his old accomplices!