TO-DAY IN HISTORY

Southland Times, Issue 20794, 7 June 1929, Page 6

TO-DAY IN HISTORY

JUNE 7. Born: John Rennie, engineer, Prestonkirk, 1761; Robert Jenkinson, Earl of Liverpool, Prime Minister of George IV., 1770; Rev. W. D. Conybeare, geologist, London, 1787. Died: St. Willibald, Aichstadt, 790; Robert Bruce, King of Scots, Cardross Castle, 1329; John Aubrey, antiquary, 1697; Bishop John Sage, controversialist, Edinburgh, 1711; William Aikman, artist, London, 1731; Bishop William Warburton, Gloucester, 1779; Frederick William 111., King of Prussia, 1840; Sir John Graham Dalyell, Bart,., naturalist, Edinburgh, 1851. 'BISHOP WARBURTON. A much less familiar name to posterity is Warburton than Johnson, but had anyone in the eighteenth century predicted such a freak of fame in the blaze of the Bishop’s glory of learning and rhetoric, he would certainly have been listened to with incredulity. Johnson and Warburton were contemporaries; Warburton by eleven years was Johnson’s senior but their lives went on together for three score and ten and only five years divided the death of the great Bishop from that of the great Doctor. Strange to say they met only once as Boswell records; namely at the'house of Mrs French in London, well known for her elegant assemblies and bringing eminent characters together; and the interview proved mutually agreeable. On one occasion it was told the Doctor that Warburton had said, “I admire Johnson but I cannot bear his style;” to which he replied, “That is exactly my case with him.”

William Warburton was born on the 24th December, 1698, at Newark, where his father was town-clerk and died when William was in his eighth year. His mother had him educated for an attorney and when he was twenty-one he commenced business in Newark. Finding little to do he threw up law and entered the church, and was fortunate enough to find a patron in Sir Robert Sutton who, after various favours, presented him to the living of Brant Broughton, in Nottinghamshire. There he devoted himself to those literary pursuits by which he raised himself to fame and fortune. In a visit to London in 1726 he identified himself with the party which hated Pope, and considering what followed in after years was unfortunate enough to write a letter in which he said that Dryden borrowed for want of leisure and Pope for want of genius. Twelve years afterwards in 1739, the orthodoxy of Pope’s "Essay on Man” having been attacked, Warburton published a series of letters in its defence, which led to an introduction and a very intimate friendship between the divine and the poet. When Pope died in 1744 it was found that he had left him ha.f his library and the copyrights of all his works valued by Johnson at £4OOO. Pope’s attachment for Warburton had driven Bolingbroke from his side and after his death some sparring ensued between the old friend and the new in the course of which Bolingbroke addressed Warburton in a pamphlet entitled "A Familiar Epistle to the Most Impudent Man Living.” By Pope he was introduced to Ralph Allen of Prior Park, Bath—Fielding's Squire Allworthy—whose niece he married in 1745, and through her inherited Allen's extensive property.

In the years intervening between these events Warburton had made even greater progress in an ecclesiastical sense. In 1736 he published his celebrated defence of "The Alliance between Church and State” and in 173 S the first volume of his great work, "The Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated on the Principles of a Religious Deist, from the Omission of the Doctrine of a Future State of Rewards and Punishments in the Jewish Dispensation." It had often been brought as a reproach against Moses that his code contained no reference to heaven or hell, and theologians had ineffectually resisted it with a variety of apologies. YVarburton, on the other hand, boldly allowing the charge, went on to argue that therein lay the infallible proof of the divine mission of the Hebrew law giver, for unless he had been miraculously assisted, it was impossible he could have dispensed with the armoury of hopes and terrors supplied by a doctrine of immortality. As might be expected a violent storm of controversy broke out over this novel and audacious defence. The large and varied stores of learning with which he illustrated the course of his argument won the admiration of readers who cordially disliked his conclusion. In allusion to Warburton s abundant and well applied reading Johnson observed: "His table is always full. He brings things from the north and from the south and from every quarter. In his “Divine Legation” you are always entertained. He carries you round and round without carrying you forward to the point ; but then you have no wish to be carried forward.” * Honour and promotions now flowed on Warburton, culminating m 1759 in his elevation to the bishopric o'f Gloucester which he held till his death in 1779.

A powerful and daring, if not unscruplous reasoner, Warburton reaped the full measure of his fame in his own generation. A brilliant intellect, whose highest efforts was a paradox like the "Divine Legation” may astonish for a season but it can never command enduring regard. His lack of earnest faith in his opinions inevitably produced in his writings a shallowness of tone, causing the discerning reader to query whether Warburton, had he chosen might not have pleaded with equal effort on the other side. His antagonists, who were many, he treated with supercilious contempt, passable perhaps in a “Duncaid,” but. inexcusable in a clergyman dealing with clergymen. Warburton had never been trained to bridle his tongue when his anger was roused. It is on record that he said of Wilkes in ihe House of Lords, that, "the blackest fiends in bell will not keep company ■with him when he arrives there.