SHORT but SUFFICIENT
CONFUTATION
Of Bp. Warburton’s projected defence (as he calls it) of Christianity, in his divine legation of Moses, in a letter to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of London.
My LORD,
THE reason of my presuming to write to your lordship on the following subject is, because it is a matter on which your lordship has employed your excellent pen, greatly to the benefit of the world.
And the reason of my writing at all, is owing to a book newly published[¹] in defence of bishop Warburton, in which your lordship, is charged with a multitude of contradictions, and inconsistencies relating to this point.
[¹] Free and candid examination of the bishop of London’s sermons, &c.
It is not my design to enter here as an assistant to your lordship. For this is quite needless.
My intention is, as mentioned in the title page. And because bishop Warburton has owned this writer, as a most able defender of his scheme. I have taken occasion to shew, that it is a scheme so contrary to scripture, and the truth of things, as no art of words, or stretch of genius, however powerful in paradox, can ever be able to support.
The author of this book, as bishop Warburton assures us,[¹] is too modest to make his name known to the world; a quality, which from the reading of his book, one would not suspect to be so predominate in him.—But though modesty has forced him to conceal his name, yet he has given us some information of his character. He begins; “I, who am a bare looker-on, and absolutely disengaged from all that biass of affection, which is so wont to warp the followers of an old system, or the inventers of a new, have done my best to examine this question with all impartiality.”[²]