Everything about William Warburton totally explained
William Warburton (
December 24,
1698 –
June 7,
1779), was an
English critic and churchman,
Bishop of Gloucester from
1759.
He was born at
Newark, where his father, who belonged to an old Cheshire family, was
town clerk. William was educated at Oakham and Newark
grammar schools, and in
1714 he was articled to Mr Kirke, an attorney, at East Markham, in
Nottinghamshire. After serving his articles he returned to Newark to practise as a solicitor; but, having given studied
Latin and
Greek, he changed his mind and was ordained deacon by the
Archbishop of York in 1723. In 1727 he was ordained by the Bishop of London. He had by now written the notes he contributed to
Lewis Theobald's edition of
Shakespeare, and had contributed anonymously to a
pamphlet on the jurisdiction of the
Court of Chancery,
The Legal Judicature in Chancery stated (1727).
This was an answer to another anonymous pamphlet, written by
Philip Yorke, afterwards Lord Chancellor, Hardwicke, who replied in an enlarged edition (1728) of his original
Discourse of the Judicial Authority ... of Master of the Rolls. Sir
Robert Sutton gave Warburton the small living of
Greasley, in Nottinghamshire, exchanged next year for that of
Brant Broughton,
Lincolnshire. He held in addition, from 1730, the living of rector at
Firsby in Lincolnshire, a post he held until 1756 although he never resided in the village. In 1728 he was made an honorary M.A. of the
University of Cambridge.
At Brant Broughton for eighteen years he spent his time in study, the first result of which was his treatise on the
Alliance between Church and State (1736). The book brought Warburton into favour at court, and he probably only missed immediate preferment by the death of
Queen Caroline.
His next, and best-known, work,
Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated on the Principles of a Religious Deist (2 vols., 1737-1741), preserves his name as the author of the most daring and ingenious of theological paradoxes. The
deists had made the absence of any inculcation of the doctrine of a future life an objection to the divine authority of the Mosaic writings. Warburton boldly admitted the fact and turned it against the adversary by maintaining that no merely human legislator would have omitted such a sanction of morality. The author's extraordinary power, learning and originality were acknowledged on all hands, though he excited censure and suspicion by his tenderness to the alleged heresies of
Conyers Middleton. The book aroused much controversy. In a pamphlet of "Remarks" (1742), he replied to
John Tillard, and
Remarks on Several Occasional Reflections (1744-1745) was an answer to
Akenside, Conyers Middleton (who had been his friend),
Richard Pococke,
Nicholas Mann,
Richard Grey,
Henry Stebbing and other of his critics. As he characterized his opponents in general as the "pestilent herd of libertine scribblers with which the island is overrun," it's no matter of surprise that the book made him many bitter enemies.
Either in quest of
paradox, or unable to recognize the real tendencies of
Alexander Pope's
Essay on Man, he defended it against the
Examen of
Jean Pierre de Crousaz, in a series of articles (1738-1739) contributed to
The Works of the Learned. Whether Pope had really understood the tendency of his own work has always been doubtful, but there's no question that he was glad of an apologist, and that Warburton's
jeu d'esprit in the long run helped more than all his erudition. It occasioned a sincere friendship between him and Pope, whom he persuaded to add a fourth book to the
Dunciad, and encouraged to substitute
Colley Cibber for Theobald as the hero of the poem in the edition of
1743 published under the editorship of Warburton.
Pope left him the copyright and the editorship of his works, and contributed even more to his advancement by introducing him to Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield, who obtained for him in 1746 the preachership of
Lincoln's Inn, and to
Ralph Allen, who, says Johnson, "gave him his niece and his estate, and, by consequence, a bishopric." The marriage took place in 1745, and from that time Warburton lived at his father-in-law's estate at
Prior Park, in Gloucestershire, which he inherited on Allen's death in 1764. In 1747 his edition of Shakespeare was published, incorporating material from Pope's earlier edition. He had previously entrusted notes and emendations on Shakespeare to Sir
Thomas Hanmer, whose unauthorized use of them led to a heated controversy.
As early as
1727 Warburton had corresponded with Theobald on Shakespearean subjects. He now accused him of stealing his ideas and denied his critical ability. Theobald's superiority to Warburton as a Shakespearean critic has long since been acknowledged. Warburton was further kept busy by the attacks on his
Divine Legation from all quarters, by a dispute with
Bolingbroke respecting Pope's behaviour in the affair of Bolingbroke's
Patriot King, by his edition of Pope's works (1751) and by a vindication in 1750 of the alleged miraculous interruption of the rebuilding of the temple of
Jerusalem undertaken by
Julian, in answer to
Conyers Middleton. Warburton's manner of dealing with opponents was both insolent and rancorous, but it did him no disservice.
He became
prebendary of Gloucester in
1753, chaplain to the king in 1754, prebendary of Durham in 1755, dean of Bristol in 1757, and in 1759 bishop of Gloucester. He continued to write so long as the infirmities of age allowed, collecting and publishing his sermons, and toiling to complete the
Divine Legation, further fragments of which were published with his posthumous
Works. He wrote a defence of revealed religion in his
View of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy (1754), and
Hume's
Natural History of Religion called forth some Remarks ... "by a gentleman of Cambridge" from Warburton, in which his friend and biographer,
Richard Hurd, had a share (1757).
He made in
1762 a vigorous attack on
Methodism under the title of
The Doctrine of Grace. He also engaged in a keen controversy with
Robert Lowth, afterwards bishop of London, on the book of Job, in which Lowth brought home charges of lack of scholarship and of insolence that admitted of no denial. His last important act was to found in 1768 the Warburtonian lecture at Lincoln's Inn, "to prove the truth of revealed religion ... from the completion of the prophecies of the Old and New Testament which relate to the Christian Church, especially to the apostasy of Papal Rome." He died at Gloucester.
Warburton's works were edited (7 vols., 1788) by Bishop Hurd with a biographical preface, and the correspondence between the two friends--an important contribution to the literary history of the period--was edited by Dr Parr in 1808. Warburton's life was also written by John Selby Watson in 1863, and Mark Pattison made him the subject of an essay in 1889.
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