parties seem to be agreed in. Indeed, the case is different as to the particular superstitions of the Church of Rome, because both parties are not agreed in their original. If, therefore, a Protestant should charge them on the priests of that church, and an advocate for Popery should pretend to wipe off the charge, by proving them invented by the people before the clergy came in to bear their part, this would, as your Lordship most justly observes, prove a very ridiculous defence. For the ground of difference still remains; or, rather, the point is given up by the defender, in proving them the product of the people, when he should have shown them to be as old as the founders of Christianity.

Your Lordship has made me but too sensible of the inconveniences of publishing the first part alone, and of its bearing the title of the whole. I have, as your Lordship is so good to direct, endeavoured to remedy it what I could, in the advertisement to the reader.

I have said a good deal of the force of ridicule in my Address to the Freethinkers; but I was never made so sensible of it, as in your Lordship's very agreeable and apposite application of the preacher's method to mine. It, indeed, shows me in a light so pleasantly ridiculous, that I could not forbear laughing, though so much at my own expense. I am, certainly, very justly liable to your censure; and the most I can say in extenuation is

only this, that (except the case of the philosopher's belief) the use of every observation I have made, throughout the whole volume, to our holy religion, may be easily seen without the subsequent part. It is true that that single exception includes a great deal. But then your Lordship will be so good to observe, that the point to be proved in my defence of Moses, is not that the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is true; (that I take for granted, or leave for others to prove ;) but that it is so useful that no lawgiver, without divine assistance, could be able to leave it out of his scheme of government. The consequence of this is, that that discourse of the philosopher's belief, which would be an argument against a future state, was my point the truth of that state, is only here an argument for its utility, as my point is, the necessity of that belief to society. So that an argument is not here given that is afterwards to be answered and shown false; which would be in the highest degree ridiculous for an author in earnest; but such an argument as is thought true, and to be made use of afterwards as a truth.

BISHOP SHERLOCK TO REV. W. WARBURTON.

[Thomas Sherlock was the eldest son of Dr. William Sherlock, Dean of St. Paul's. He was born in London in 1678, and educated at Eton, where he gave early promise of future excellence. In 1693 he was removed to Katharine Hall, Cambridge, where he took his degrees of B.A. 1697, M.A. 1701. The high estimation in which he was held at an early period of his life is proved by his having received the important preferment of Master of the Temple in 1704. In 1714 he proceeded D.D. and was chosen Master of his College. When appointed Vice Chancellor he discharged the office with the highest benefit to the University, displaying not only great abilities, but distinguished wisdom, policy, and talents for governing. In 1716 he was made Dean of Chichester, and appeared first as an author in the celebrated Bangorian Controversy, taking the side of orthodoxy in opposition to Bishop Hoadley. He was consecrated Bishop of Bangor in 1728; translated to Sarum in 1734; refused the Primacy in 1747, on account of ill health, but, having recovered, accepted the See of London in 1748. He died in 1761, aged 84, and was buried at Fulham.

He had received from nature an enlarged mind, a quick apprehension, and a solid judgment; advantages which he improved by industrious application to both solid and ornamental studies. Amongst the former he devoted himself most to divinity and law, both canon and common. He was a man of constant and exemplary piety, an earnest and effective preacher, and distinguished for his munificent charities.

As an author he is most advantageously known by his Discourses on Prophecy, and his Sermons; the extraordinary merit of which, in respect of both matter and style, has long since gained them a distinguished place in English theology.—(Chalmers' Biog. Dict.)

It may be thought no trifling attestation to the orthodoxy of Bishop Warburton's leading arguments in the Divine Legation,

that that work should have received the countenance and approval of so sound a divine as Bishop Sherlock;-a point which the succeeding Letters seem to place beyond a doubt.-ED.]

REVEREND SIR,

Wallington, Herts, Oct. 18, 1737.

Last night I received some sheets of your book, and ran them over with great pleasure, but not with the attention which the subject and your way of treating it demand. I can therefore at present only thank you for the favour you have done me, and give you my opinion upon a very small matter, which yet I apprehend will greatly prejudice many readers against you.

In page 55, speaking of Wollaston, you take occasion to quote a passage from Don Quixote. As Wollaston was a sober serious writer and a scholar, and of an exceeding good character in private life, the treating his performance with an air of ridicule will be thought very injurious to him, and very improper to come from you; and will raise a good deal of unnecessary resentment. I am so much of this opinion, that if I was to judge for you, that leaf should be reprinted, and the passage left out.* I shall be in town very soon, and have the pleasure of seeing the sheets as they

come out.

Your

very affectionate brother and servant, THO. SARUM.

See Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 26, 4to edit. where it will

be seen that Bishop Hare gave him the same advice.

BISHOP SHERLOCK TO REV. W. WARBURTON.

SIR,

Wallington, near Baldock, Herts, Nov. 29, 1737.

I am very much obliged to you for the pleasure you have given me in perusing the sheets of your book as they came from the press. There are many things quite new to me, and very entertaining. Your proofs of the magistrate's influence in matters of religion are very copious and strong, stronger perhaps than ever were produced by the gentlemen who are willing to think all religion to be the contrivance of the civil magistrate.

I received most of the sheets in town at the time when the Queen's illness and death left hardly room to think sedately of any thing else. I hope to see you in town before the next summer; by that time I shall have considered the book together, and, if any thing sticks with me, I shall be glad of your assistance to clear it up.

Mr. Wollaston was, I believe, a serious Christian. He pursued his point to open the principles of natural religion, by natural reason only; but towards the conclusion of his book there is a plain indication in so many words, that he wanted other help; and I am well informed that he had begun the proof and explication of the Christian religion in the same method:-the unfinished work was found papers after his death.

among

his

*"The Religion of Nature delineated," p. 211.