The author of “The Canons of Criticism” addressed a severe sonnet to Warburton; and alludes to the “Alliance”:—
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“Reign he sole king in paradoxal land, And for Utopia plan his idle schemes Of visionary leagues, alliance vain ’Twixt Will and Warburton—” |
On which he adds this note, humorously stating the grand position of the work:—“The whole argument by which the alliance between Church and State is established, Mr. Warburton founds upon this supposition—‘That people, considering themselves in a religious capacity, may contract with themselves, considered in a civil capacity.’ The conceit is ingenious, but is not his own. Scrub, in the Beaux Stratagem, had found it out long ago: he considers himself as acting the different parts of all the servants in the family; and so Scrub, the coachman, ploughman, or justice’s clerk, might contract with Scrub, the butler, for such a quantity of ale as the other assumed character demanded.”—Appendix, p. 261.
“Monthly Review,” vol. xvi. p. 324, the organ of the dissenters.
See article Hobbes, for his system. The great Selden was an Erastian; a distinction extremely obscure. Erastus was a Swiss physician of little note, who was for restraining the ecclesiastical power from all temporal jurisdiction. Selden did him the honour of adopting his principles. Selden wrote against the divine right of tithes, but allowed the legal right, which gave at first great offence to the clergy, who afterwards perceived the propriety of his argument, as Wotton has fully acknowledged.
It does not always enter into the design of these volumes to examine those great works which produced literary quarrels. But some may be glad to find here a word on this original project.
The grand position of the Divine Legation is, that the knowledge of the immortality of the soul, or a future state of reward and punishment, is absolutely necessary in the moral government of the universe. The author shows how it has been inculcated by all good legislators, so that no religion could ever exist without it; but the Jewish could, from its peculiar government, which was theocracy—a government where the presence of God himself was perpetually manifested by miracles and new ordinances: and hence temporal rewards and punishments were sufficient for that people, to whom the unity and power of the Godhead were never doubtful. As he proceeded, he would have opened a new argument, viz., that the Jewish religion was only the part of a revelation, showing the necessity of a further one for its completion, which produced Christianity.