_Warburtons Paradox on the Immortality of the Soul._
Warburton, the editor and commentator of Shakespeare, and Bishop of
Gloucester, using English liberty, and abusing the custom of
vituperating against adversaries, has composed four volumes to prove
that the immortality of the soul was never announced in the Pentateuch;
and to conclude from this very proof, that the mission of Moses, which
he calls "legation," was divine. The following is an abstract of his
book, which he himself gives at the commencement of the first volume:
"1. That to inculcate the doctrine of a future state of rewards and
punishments is necessary to the well-being of civil society.
"2. That all mankind [wherein he is mistaken], especially the most wise
and learned nations of antiquity, have concurred in believing and
teaching, that this doctrine was of such use to civil society.
"3. That the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is
not to be found in, nor did it make part of, the Mosaic dispensation.
"That therefore the law of Moses is of divine origin;
"Which one or both of the two following syllogisms will evince:
"I. Whatever religion and society have no future state for their support
must be supported by an extraordinary Providence.
"The Jewish religion and society had no future state for their support;
"Therefore the Jewish religion and society were supported by an
extraordinary Providence.
"And again,
"II. The ancient lawgivers universally believed that such a religion
could be supported only by an extraordinary Providence.
"Moses, an ancient lawgiver, versed in all the wisdom of Egypt,
purposely instituted such a religion; Therefore Moses believed his
religion was supported by an extraordinary Providence."
What is most extraordinary, is this assertion of Warburton, which he has
put in large characters at the head of his work. He has often been
reproached with his extreme temerity and dishonesty in daring to say
that all ancient lawgivers believed that a religion which is not founded
on rewards and punishments after death cannot be upheld but by an
extraordinary Providence: not one of them ever said so. He does not even
undertake to adduce a single instance of this in his enormous book,
stuffed with an immense number of quotations, all foreign to the
subject. He has buried himself under a heap of Greek and Latin authors,
ancient and modern, that no one may reach him through this horrible
accumulation of coverings. When at length the critic has rummaged to the
bottom, the author is raised to life from among all those dead, to load
his adversaries with abuse.
It is true, that near the close of the fourth volume, after ranging
through a hundred labyrinths, and fighting all he met with on the way,
he does at last come back to his great question from which he has so
long wandered. He takes up the Book of Job, which the learned consider
as the work of an Arab; and he seeks to prove, that Job did not believe
in the immortality of the soul. He then explains, in his own way, all
the texts of Scripture that have been brought to combat his opinion.
All that should be said of him is, that if he was in the right, it was
not for a bishop to be so in the right. He should have felt that two
dangerous consequences might be drawn: but all goes by chance in this
world. This man, who became an informer and a persecutor, was not made a
bishop through the patronage of a minister of state, until immediately
after he wrote his book.
At Salamanca, at Coimbra, or at Rome, he would have been obliged to
retract and to ask pardon. In England he became a peer of the realm,
with an income of a hundred thousand livres. Here was something to
soften his manners.