TO A NEW EDITION OF BOOKS I. II. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE PHILIP EARL OF HARDWICKE, LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR OF GREAT BRITAIN. MY LORD, YOUR OUR Lordship having fo far approved of the good intentions of my endeavours for above twenty years paft, in the cause of RELIGION, as to confer upon me a distinguishing mark of your favour, I am proud to lay hold of the first public opportunity which I have had, of defiring leave to make my most grateful acknow ledgments. I take the liberty to infcribe to your Lordship a new Edition of a work tending to fhew and illuftrate, by a new argument, the Divine Legation of Mofes; which in our own, as well as former times, the most celebrated Champions of Infidelity have cunningly, for their own purposes, laboured with all their might, to overthrow. If I have fucceeded, or as far as I have fucceeded, or may hereafter fucceed, in the further profecution of this attempt, I fhall ftrengthen one foundation of Christianity. As an author, I am not folicitous for the reputation of any literary performance. A work given to the world, every reader has a right to cenfure. If it has merit, it will go down to posterity: if it has none, the fooner it dies and is forgot the better. But I am extremely anxious that no good man should mistake the view with which I write; and therefore cannot help feeling, perhaps too fenfibly, when it is misrepresented. So far as any cenfure can fhew that my poor labours are not calculated to promote Letters or Learning, to advance Truth, or, above all, to ferve the cause of Religion, which I profefs as a Christian and a Member of the Church of England, I own, I have miffed my end; and will be the first to join with the cenfure which condemns them. In the mean time, the first book of this work, fuch as it is, is here humbly commended to your Lordship's protection. For to whom does it fo properly belong to patronize an argument fhewing the UTILITY of Religion to Society, as to that great Magistrate, Legislator, and Statesman, who is best able to recommend and apply the fubject, by his being convinced of the TRUTH of Religion; and by his giving the most exemplary proof of his belief, in a steddy regard to it's dictates in his life and actions? It is this which makes me presume on your Lordship's protection, not any thing extraordinary in the work itself. It is enough for your Lordship to find in those you favour a real zeal for the interests of Virtue and Religion. The effectual service of those interests depends on so many accidents, respecting both the ability of the Writer and the difpofition of the Reader, that your Lordship's humanity and candour, inlarged, and not (as it often happens) diminished, by your great knowledge of mankind, will always difpofe you to estimate merit by a better rule than the success. I am, MY LORD, With the utmoft Gratitude, Your Lordship's most obliged, London, Nov. 5, 1754• W. WARBURTON. A S the following difcourfe was written for your ufe, you have the best right to this addrefs. 1 could never approve the cuftom of dedicating books to men, whofe profeffions made them ftrangers to the fubject. A difcourfe on the Ten Predicaments, to a leader of armies, or a fyftem of casuistry to a minister of state, always appeared to me a high abfurdity. Another advantage I have in this address, is that I fhall not lie under any temptations of flattery; which, at this time of day, when every topic of adulation has been exhausted, will be of equal ease and advantage to us both. Not but I must own you have been managed, even by some of our Order, with very fingular complaifance. Whether it was that they affected the fame of moderation, or had a higher ambition for the honour of your good word, I know not; but I, who neither love your caufe, nor fear the abilities that fupport it, while I pre ferve serve for your persons that juftige and charity which my profeffion teaches to be due to all, can never be brought to think otherwise of your character, than as the defpifers of the Mafter whom I ferve, and as the implacable enemies of that Order, to which I have the honour to belong. And as fuch, I fhould be tempted to glory in your cenfures; but would certainly refufe your commendations. Indeed, were it my defign, in the manner of modern dedicators, to look out for powerful protectors, I do not know where I could fooner find them, than amongst the gentlemen of your denomination for nothing, I believe, strikes the serious observer with more furprize, in this age of novelties, than that ftrange propensity to infidelity, fo visible in men of almost every condition; amongst whom the advocates of Deism are received with all the applauses due to the inventors of the arts of life, or the deliverers of oppreffed and injured nations. The glorious liberty of the Gospel is forgotten amidst our clamours' against church-tyranny; and we flight the fruits of the restored Tree of Knowledge, for the fake of gathering a few barren leaves of Free-thinking, mifgrafted on the old prolific stock of Deism. But let me not be misunderstood; here are no infinuations intended against liberty: for, furely, whatever be the cause of this epidemic folly, it would be unjust to afcribe it to the freedom of the Prefs, which wife men have ever held one of the most precious branches of national Liberty. What, though it midwifes, as it were, these brain-fick births; yet, at the fame time that it facilitates the delivery, it lends a forming hand to the mishapen iffue: for, as in natural bodies, become diftorted by fuffering in the conception, or by too ftrait imprisonment in the womb, a free unreftrained expofition of the parts may, in time, reduce them nearer to their natural rectitude; fo crude and rickety notions, enfeebled by restraint, when permitted to be drawn out and examined, may, by the reform of their obliquities, and the correction of their virulency, at length acquire health and proportion. Nor lefs friendly is this liberty to the generous advocate of religion: for how could fuch a one, when in earnest convinced by the evidence of his cause, defire an adversary whom the laws had be fore difarmed; or value a victory, where the Magiftrate must triumph with him? Even I, the meaneft in this controversy, should have been ashamed of projecting the defence of the great Jewish Lawgiver, did not I know that the fame liberty of thinking was impartially indulged to all. And if my diffenting in the course of this defence from fome received opinions need an apology, I defire it may be thought, that I ventured into this track the lefs unwillingly, to fhew, by my not intrenching in authorized fpeculations, that I put myself upon the fame footing with you, and would claim no privilege that was not in common. your This liberty then may you long poffefs; may you know how tỏ ufe; may you gratefully acknowledge! I fay this, because one cannot, without indignation, observe, that amidst the full poffeffion of it, you ftill continue, with the meaneft affectation, to fill prefaces with repeated clamours against the difficulties and difcou ragements attending the exercise of Free-thinking: and, in a peculiar ftrain of modefty and reasoning, employ this very liberty to per fuade the world you ftill want it. In extolling liberty, we can join with you; in the vanity of pretending to have contributed most to its establishment, we can bear with you; but in the low cunning of pretending still to groan under the want of it, we can neither join nor bear with you. There was indeed a time, and that within our own memories, when fuch complaints were seasonable and even ufeful; but, happy for you, Gentlemen, you have out-lived it all the rest is merely Sir Martin *; it is continuing to fumble on the lute, though the mufick has been long over. For it is not a thing. to be disguised, that what we hear from you, on this head, is but an aukward, though envenomed imitation of an original work of one, whoever he was, who appears to have been amongst the * In a comedy of Dryden's.. greateft, |