splendid meteor across the horizon of his own age, sunk into all but oblivion.

Warburton was the son of an attorney at Newark, in Nottinghamshire, and was born on the twenty-fourth of December, 1698. Though for some years he followed, in his native town, the profession of his father, he seems to have had little business, and consequently he applied those high endow ments of classical knowledge which he had made by his industry at school, to pursuits more congenial to his taste and inclination. In the twenty-fifth year of his age he abandoned the law and adopted the clerical profession; and by a dedication to a small and obscure volume of translations from Roman literature, published in 1723, obtained a presentation to a small vicarage. He now threw himself amidst the inferior literary society of London, and sought for subsistence and advancement by his pen. On obtaining the rectory of Brand Broughton, in Lincolnshire, he retired thither, and devoted himself, for years, to a long and severe course of reading.

The first work of any importance that Warburton published, appeared in 1736, under the title of Alliance between Church and State, which, though scarcely calculated to please either party in the church, was extensively read, and brought the author into notice. In his next production, the Divine Legation of Moses, of which the first volume appeared in 1738, and the remaining four in the course of several years thereafter, the gigantic scholarship of Warburton shone out in all its vastness. It had often been objected to the pretensions of the Jewish religion, that it presented nowhere any acknowledgment of the principle of a future state of rewards and punishments. Warburton, who delighted in paradox, instead of attempting to deny this or explain it away, at once acknowledged it, but asserted that therein lay the strongest argument for the divine mission of Moses. To establish this point, he ransacked the whole domain of pagan antiquity, and reared such a mass of curious and confounding argument, that mankind might be said to be awed by it into a partial concession to the author's views. He never completed the work; he becaine, indeed, weary of it; and perhaps the fallacy of the hypothesis was first secretly acknowledged by himself. If it had been consecrated to truth, instead of paradox, it would have been by far the most illustrious book of the age. As it is, we only look upon it to wonder at its endless learning and misspent ingenuity. Ten years after the author's death, this great work is spoken of by Gibbon as already a brilliant ruin. It is now rarely referred to, its learning being felt as no attraction where the solid qualities of truth are wanting.

The merits of Warburton, or his worldly wisdom, brought him preferment in the church he rose through the grades of prebend of Gloucester, prebend of Durham, and dean of Bristol, to the bishopric of Gloucester, to which he attained, in 1759. It would be tedious, however, to detail the other literary adventures of this arrogant prelate. The only one that falls particularly in our way is his edition of the works of Pope, for the publica. tion of which he had obtained a patent right in consequence of the poet's

bequest. The annotations of Warburton upon Pope, perverting the author's meaning in numberless instances, and full of malignity against the learned men of the age, were a disgrace to contemporary literature.

The latter years of Warburton's life were passed in a melancholy state of mental weakness, occasioned partly by grief for the loss of a son, but chiefly by the recollection of the unhallowed means by which he had reached his exalted position in the church. He died in his palace at Gloucester, on the seventh of June, 1779, in the eighty-second year of his age. From the 'Divine Legation' we select the following passage, as a specimen of the author's style:

THE VARIOUS LIGHTS IN WHICH GRECIAN MYTHOLOGY WAS

REGARDED.

Here matters rested: and the vulgar faith seems to have remained a long time undisturbed. But as the age grew refined, and the Greeks became inquisitive and learned, the common mythology began to give offence. The speculative and more delicate were shocked at the absurd and immoral stories of their gods, and scandalized to find such things make an authentic part of their story. It may, indeed, be thought matter of wonder how such tales, taken up in a barbarous age, came not to sink into oblivion as the age grew more knowing, from mere abhorrence of their indecencies and shame of their absurdities. Without doubt this had been their fortune, but for an unlucky circumstance. The great poets of Greece, who had most contributed to refine the public taste and manners, and were now grown into a kind of sacred authority, had sanctified these silly legends by their writings, which time had now consigned to immortality.

Vulgar paganism, therefore, in such an age as this, lying open to the attacks of curious and inquisitive men, would not, we may well think, be long at rest. It is true, freethinking men lay under great difficulties and discouragements. To insult the religion of one's country, which is now the mark of learned distinction, was branded in the ancient world with public infamy. Yet freethinkers there were, who, as is their wont, together with the public worship of their country, throw off all reverence for religion in general. Amongst these was Euhemerus, the Messenian, and, by what we can learn, the most distinguished of this tribe. This man, in mere wantonness of heart, began his attacks on religion by divulging the secret of the mysteries. But as it was capital to do this directly and professedly, he contrived to cover his perfidy and malice by the intervention of a kind of Utopian romance. He pretended, 'that in a certain city, which he came to in his travels, he found this grand secret, that the gods were dead men deified, preserved in their sacred writings, and confirmed by monumental records inscribed to the gods themselves, who were there said to be interred.' So far was not amiss; but then, in the genuine spirit of his class, who never cultivate a truth but in order to graft a lie upon it, he pretended that dead mortals were the first gods, and that an imaginary divinity in these early heroes and conquerors created the idea of a superior power, and introduced the practice of religious worship amongst men.' The learned reader sees below [note in Greek omitted,] that our freethinker is true to his cause, and endeavours to verify the fundamental principle of his sect, that fear first made gods, even in that very instance where the contrary passion seems to have been at its height, the time when men made gods of their deceased benefactors. A little matter of address hides the shame of so perverse a piece of malice. He represents those founders of society and fathers of their country under the idea of destructive conquerors, who by mere force and fear had brought men into subjection and slavery. On this

account it was that indignant antiquity concurred in giving Euhemerus the proper name of atheist, which, however, he would hardly have escaped, though he had done no more than divulge the secret of the mysteries, and had not poisoned his discovery with this impious and forcing addition, so contrary to the true spirit of that secret. This detection had been long dreaded by the orthodox protectors of pagan worship; and they were provided of a temporary defence in their intricate and properly perplexed system of symbolic adoration. But this would do only to stop a breach for the present, till a better could be provided, and was too weak to stand alone against so violent an attack. The philosophers, therefore, now took up the defence of paganism where the priests had left it, and to the others' symbols added their own allegories, for a second cover to the absurdities of the ancient mythology; for all the genuine sects of philosophy, as we have observed, were steady patriots, legislation making one essential part of their philosophy; and to legislate without the foundation of a natural religion, was, in their opinion, building castles in the air. So that we are not to wonder they took alarm, and opposed these insulters of the public worship with all their vigour. But as they never lost sight of their proper character, they so contrived that the defence of the national religion should terminate in a recommendation of their philosophic speculations. Hence, their support of the public worship, and their evasions of Euhemerus's charge, turned upon this proposition, 'That the whole ancient mythology was no other than the vehicle of physical, moral, and divine knowledge.' And to this it is the learned Eusebius refers, where he says, 'That a new race of men refined their old gross theology, and gave it in an honester look, and brought it nearer to the truth of things.'

However, this proved a troublesome work, and, after all, ineffectuel for the security of men's private morals, which the example of the licentious story, according to the latter, would not fail to influence, how well soever the allegoric interpretation was calculated to cover the public honour of religion; so that the more ethical of the philosophers grew peevish with what gave them so much trouble, and answered so little to the interior of religious practice. This made them break out, from time to time, into hasty resentments against their capital poets; unsuitable, one would think, to the dignity of the authors of such noble recondite truths as they would persuade us to believe were treasured up in their writings. Hence it was that Plato banished Homer from his republic, and that Pythagoras, in one of his extramundane adventures, saw both Homer and Hesiod doing penance in hell, and hung up there for examples, to be bleached and purified from the grossness and pollution of their ideas.

The first of these allegorizers, as we learn from Laertius, was Anaxagoras, who, with his friend Metrodorus, turned Homer's mythology into a system of ethics. Next came Hereclides Ponticus, and of the same fables made as good a system of physics; which, to show us with what kind of spirit it was composed, he entitled Antirresis ton kat autou [Homerou] blasphemesanton. And last of all, when the necessity became more pressing, Proclus undertook to show that all Homer's fables were no other than physical, ethical, and moral allegories.

*

DR. DODDRIDGE, a distinguished non-conformist divine, and successful author, presents a remarkable contrast to the unhappy prelate whom we have just noticed. His grandfather had been ejected from the living of Shipperton, in Middlesex, by the act of uniformity, in 1662; and his father being engaged in mercantile pursuits in London, there married the only daughter of a German who had fled from Prague to escape the persecution which raged in Bohemia, after the expulsion of Frederick, the Elector Palatine, when, to abjure or emigrate, were the only alternatives.

Philip Doddridge was born in London, on the twenty-sixth of June, 1702; and that his pious parents early instructed him in religious knowledge, Orton, his biographer, bears the following testimony:-' I have heard him relate that his mother taught him the history of the Old and New Testaments before he could read, by the assistance of some Dutch tiles in the chimney in the room where they commonly sat; and her wise and pious reflections upon the stories there represented, were the means of making some good impressions upon his heart, which never wore out; and therefore this method of instruction he frequently recommended to parents.'

In 1712, Doddridge was sent to school at Kingston-upon-Thames; but both his parents dying within three years afterwards, he was removed to St. Albans, and whilst there, was solemnly admitted, in his sixteenth year, a member of the non-conforming congregation. His religious impressions were deep and sincere; and when, in 1718, the Duchess of Bedford offered to educate him for the ministry in the church of England, Doddridge declined, from conscientious scruples, to avail himself of the advantage. A generous friend, Dr. Clarke of St. Albans, now stepped forward to patronize the studious youth; and in 1719, he was placed at an academy established at Kibworth, in Leicestershire, for the education of dissenters. Here he resided three years, pursuing his studies for the ministry, and cultivating a taste for general literature. To one of his fellow-pupils who had condoled with him on being buried alive, Doddridge writes in the following happy strain :

'Here I stick close to those delightful studies which a favourable providence has made the business of my life. One day passeth away after another, and I only know that it passeth pleasantly with me. As for the world about me, I have very little concern with it. I live almost like a tortoise shut up in its shell, almost always in the same town, the same house, the same chamber; yet I live like a prince-not, indeed, in the pomp of greatness, but the pride of liberty; master of my books, master of my time, and, I hope I may add, master of myself. I can willingly give up the charms of London, the luxury, the company, the popularity of it, for the secret pleasures of rational employment and self-approbation; retired from applause and reproach, from envy and contempt, and the destructive baits of avarice and ambition. So that, instead of lamenting it as my misfortune, you should congratulate me upon it as my happiness, that I am confined in an obscure village, seeing it gives me so many valuable advantages to the most important purposes of devotion and philosophy, and, I hope I may add, usefulness too.'

From his first sermon, which was delivered before he had reached the twentieth year of his age, Doddridge became a popular preacher among the dissenters, and had calls to various congregations. In 1729, he settled at Northampton, and was thenceforth celebrated for his abilities, diligence, and zeal. Here he opened a school, and was so successful, that in a few years he engaged an assistant, to whom he assigned the care of the junior pupils, and the direction of the academy during his absence from home. He first appeared as an author in 1730, when he published a pamphlet on the Means of Reviving the Dissenting Interest. He afterwards applied himself

to the composition of practical religious works, and in the course of the four following years sent forth his Sermons on the Education of Children, Sermons to Young People, and Ten Sermons on the Power and Grace of Christ, and the Evidences of his Glorious Gospel, all of which were well received by the public. In 1741, appeared his Practical Discourses on Regeneration, and in 1745, The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul. The latter is the author's most profound work, and forms a body of practical divinity and Christian experience, which has never been surpassed by any work of a similar nature.

Two years after 'The Rise and Progress' appeared, Doddridge published Some Remarkable Passages in the Life of Colonel James Gardner, who was slain by the Rebels at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745, the popularity of which was almost unparalleled. Gardner was a brave Scottish officer who had served with distinction under Marlborough, and was aid-decamp to the Earl of Stair in his embassy to Paris. From a gay libertine life he was suddenly converted to one of the strictest piety, by what he conceived to be a supernatural interference, that is, a visible representation of Christ, suspended in the air, amidst an unusual blaze of light, and accompanied by a declaration of the words, 'Oh, sinner! did I suffer this for thee, and are these the returns? From the period of this vision till his death, twenty-six years afterwards, Colonel Gardner maintained the life and character of a sincere and zealous Christian, united with that of an intrepid and active offiThis industrious writer's last and most elaborate production, and the one on which his reputation as an author chiefly depends, is The Family Expositor, Containing a Version and Paraphrase of the New Testament, with Critical Notes, and a Practical Improvement of each Section. This compendium of Scriptural knowledge was received with the warmest approbation, both at home and abroad, and was translated into several languages. Doddridge continued his useful and laborious life at Northampton for many years; but his health failing, he was, in 1751, advised to remove to a warmer climate for the winter. In September of the same year, he, accordingly, sailed from Falmouth for Lisbon, where he arrived on the twentyfirst of October; but he survived the voyage only five days, dying on the twenty-sixth of the same month.

cer.

6

The solid learning, unquestioned piety, and truly Catholic liberality and benevolence of Dr. Doddridge, secured for him the warm respect and admiration of his contemporaries of all sects. He heartily wished and prayed for a greater union among Protestants, and longed for the happy time, when, to use his own words, the question would be, not how much we may lawfully impose, and how much we may lawfully dispute, but on the one side what we may waive, and on the other what we may acquiesce in, from a principle of mutual tenderness and respect, without displeasing our common Lord, and injuring that great cause of original Christianity which he hath appointed us to guard.' The following letter, written to Mrs. Doddridge