[Footnote 155: 'Conybeare, dessen Vertheidigung der geoffenbarten Religion die gediegenste Gegenschrift ist, die gegen Tindal erschien. Es ist eine logische Klarheit, eine Einfachheit der Darstellung, eine ueberzeugende Kraft der Beweisfuehrung, ein einleuchtender Zusammenhang des Ganzen verbunden mit wuerdiger Haltung der Polemik, philosophischer Bildung und freier Liberalitaet des Standpunkts in diesem Buch, vermoege welcher es als meisterhaft anerkannt werden muss.'--Lechler's _Geschichte des Englischen Deismus_, p. 362. Warburton calls Conybeare's one of the best reasoned books in the world.] [Footnote 156: See Watson's _Life of Warburton_, p. 293.] [Footnote 157: _Ibid._ iii. 133, 190, 201, 261.] [Footnote 158: _Enquiry into the Ground and Foundation of the Christian Religion_, p. 59.] [Footnote 159: See _Enquiry concerning Redemption_.] [Footnote 160: See his _Discourse concerning Reason_, p. 23, and his _Reflections upon the comparative excellence and usefulness of Moral and Positive Duties_, p. 27, &c.] [Footnote 161: His letters on the 'Study of History' contain the same principles.] [Footnote 162: Pattison's 'Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750,' in _Essays and Reviews_.] [Footnote 163: 'There is a book called _The Moral Philosopher_ lately published. Is it looked into? I should hope not, merely for the sake of the taste, the sense, and learning of the present age.... I hope nobody will be so indiscreet as to take notice publicly of the book, though it be only in the fag end of an objection.--It is that indiscreet conduct in our defenders of religion that conveys so many worthless books from hand to hand.'--Letter to Mr. Birch in 1737. In Nichols' _Literary Illustrations of the Eighteenth Century_, ii. 70.] [Footnote 164: See Charles Churchill's lines on Warburton in _The Duellist_. After much foul abuse, he thus describes _The Divine Legation_:-- To make himself a man of note, He in defence of Scripture wrote. So long he wrote, and long about it, That e'en believers 'gan to doubt it! A gentleman well-bred, if breeding Rests in the article of reading; A man of this world, for the next Was ne'er included in his text,' &c. &c. Gibbon calls _The Divine Legation_ 'a monument, already crumbling in the dust, of the vigour and weakness of the human mind.'--See _Life of Gibbon_, ch. vii. 223, note. Bishop Lowth says of it ironically, '_The Divine Legation_, it seems, contains in it all knowledge, divine and human, ancient and modern; it treats as of its proper subject, de omni scibili et de quolibet ente; it is a perfect encyclopaedia; it includes in itself all history, chronology, criticism, divinity, law, politics,' &c. &c.--_A Letter to the Right Rev. Author of 'The Divine Legation,'_ p. 13 (1765).]