Note 164 — Chapter III
Reading edition
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 encyclopædia; 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).