When speaking of Warburton, he says,
“Let me then go on with this work which I have begun. Let me
beg the assistance of God, that I may do it in a proper
manner, so as not to return evil for evil, or railing for
railing, but to preserve my temper, and to consider what the
Dean has said, in a cool dispassionate way if possible; or
at least to check my pen so as to say nothing that may
misbecome me either as a Christian or a clergyman.
“As to what relates to Dean Warburton, he has freed me, I
think, from all manner of obligation to say anything in
complaisance; for this, considering the usage he has given
me, would look like stooping to him, and distrusting the
cause I have to plead for. I must keep up my spirits then,
but beware of transgressing the rules of charity, of
prudence, or of good manners.
“If it be necessary that I should publish the remainder of
the Reply to the author of the Divine Legation, grant, oh
Lord! that I may conduct it with all that decency and
prudence, that strict regard to charity as well as truth,
which may become a Christian and a minister of Christ; that
I may have a constant check upon myself with regard to every
thing that may be either light and ludicrous, or bitter and
sarcastic: if my antagonist has given but too much into this
way of writing, the greater shame to him; and the greater
shame to me if I should not endeavour to avoid so palpable a
fault.”
Under the influence of an opinion, or rather of a prejudice similar to
those of plenary inspiration, and an immaculate preservation of the
text, and unmindful that the Gospels themselves convey a large portion
of their instruction under the form of allegory or parable, Mr. Peters
maintained the historical authenticity of the book of Job against Dr.
Warburton, who argued in favour of the opposite and manifestly the
correct hypothesis. Yet so accurate and so extensive were the Hebrew
learning and the general erudition of this profound scholar, that he
completely worsted the most celebrated critic of his age, and drove
him from a sober investigation of facts, of ancient opinions, or of
the peculiar form and nature of moral instruction used by eastern
nations at various and remote periods, into virulent and personal
abuse.
It is curious to observe that the Book of Job has not the most remote
allusion to anything connected with the Jews, neither to their laws or
their ritual, nor to their patriarchs, or to their leader and
legislator.
And it is more curious that in all the writings transmitted to our
time by this extraordinary people, from the Book of Genesis to the
last prophecy antecedent to its Babylonish captivity, not the
slightest reference is made to a state of future existence; unless the
strange narrative respecting the Witch of Endor should be deemed an
exception, suspected as it is of interpolation; and at all events
utterly unfitted for announcing, and that too incidentally, the most
important of revealed truths. Previously, moreover, to the captivity,
no personification is ever mentioned of the Principle of Evil.――“Now
the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field, which the
Lord God had made; and he said unto the woman,” &c. No allusion is
here made to any supernatural being; nor did the serpent lose the
disgraceful credit till three thousand five hundred years after the
fact, of having by his own unassisted subtilty, malevolence, and
craft, led our first parents into the fatal snare predestined to work
the utter and eternal destruction of countless millions of the human
race, but for the stupendous mystery of their subsequent redemption.
In the Book of Job reference is made to a future life; and the
Principle of Evil not only appears as a distinct personage, but is
placed in collision and in debate with the Principle of all Good,
driving the Divinity itself to the clumsy expedient, suited only to
the imperfections of a finite intellect, of ascertaining by an actual
experiment, whether a man were capable of sustaining certain degrees
of bodily pain and of mental affliction, without murmuring against his
Creator, the Lord and Giver of life, in whom we live, and move, and
have our being.
It seems plain, therefore, from the doctrine of a future state first
noticed in this work, from the first introduction of a being hostile
to the happiness of all others and delighting in their misery, and
from the absence of any allusion to a single fact connected with the
Mosaic dispensation, or to the history embodied in the Sacred Records;
and, lastly, from the dramatic form of the whole; that the Book of Job
must be a parable, a moral tale, a poem wholly unconnected with the
Jewish faith. It seems not to be improbable that such a composition,
teaching the important duties of resignation and submission to the
Divine will,
Αγου δε με, Ω Ζευ, και συ γ’ ἡ Πεπρωμενη,
Οποι ποθ’ ὑμιν ειμι διατεταγμενος,
Ως εψομαι γ’ αοκνος· ην δε μη θελω,
Κακος γενομενος ουδεν ηττον εψομαι,
may have been translated from the Chaldean into the Hebrew language
during the Captivity, retaining the Chaldean character, for no copy is
said to exist in the ancient or Samaritan alphabet. And a work so
excellent, so abounding in the most sublime and elevated flights of
eastern poetry, soaring towards such topics as even that poetry is
unable fully to reach, may well have been added by Ezra to the Book of
the Law which he brought before the congregation, and read before them
in the street, when they bowed their heads, and worshipped the Lord
with their faces to the ground.
The Editor has also been desirous of obtaining information respecting
another member of this family, whom, at the distance of almost two
centuries from those times of violence and of civil commotion in which
he lived, we may now consider as one persecuted in his death and in
his fame, far beyond the degree which any demerit on his part, either
as a fanatic in religion or as a partizan in politics, could have
justly merited.
He was probably selected as a victim by his opponents to gratify the
base passions of an ignorant multitude, now anxious to destroy those
whom they had previously adored; and ridicule was cast on his memory
by the triumphant party, as an expedient for beating down religious
opinions hostile to the system of ecclesiastical government then
reestablished: perhaps also, the possession of Lambeth Palace, like
that of the house adjoining the capitol by Manlius, may have excited
similar feelings; and possibly he was considered in some degree as an
equivalent for Laud.