Of Bp. WARBURTON’s projected defence (_as he calls it_) of Christianity, in his _divine legation of_ Moses, in a letter to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of London. _My LORD_, THE reason of my presuming to write to your lordship on the following subject is, because it is a matter on which your lordship has employed your excellent pen, greatly to the benefit of the world. And the reason of my writing at all, is owing to a book newly published¹ in defence of bishop _Warburton_, in which your lordship, is charged with a multitude of contradictions, and inconsistencies relating to this point. ¹ Free and candid examination of the bishop of London’s sermons, &c. It is not my design to enter here as an assistant to your lordship. For this is quite needless. My intention is, as mentioned in the title page. And because bishop _Warburton_ has owned this writer, as a most able defender of his scheme. I have taken occasion to shew, that it is a scheme so contrary to scripture, and the truth of things, as no art of words, or stretch of genius, however powerful in paradox, can ever be able to support. The author of this book, as bishop _Warburton_ assures us,¹ is too modest to make his name known to the world; a quality, which from the reading of his book, one would not suspect to be so predominate in him.――But though modesty has forced him to conceal his name, yet he has given us some information of his character. He begins; “I, who am a bare looker-on, and absolutely disengaged from all that biass of affection, which is so wont to warp the followers of an old system, or the inventers of a new, have done my best to examine this question with all impartiality.”² ¹ Preface to critical enquiry, &c. ² Examination p. 2. Had one of the antient writers of _Greece_ said this of himself, how positive, might a modern critic have been, from the decisive words, a _bare looker-on_, that he had never wrote upon the same subject before? And that therefore, any book of that kind ascribed to him, must infallibly be false and spurious. And yet, to the confusion of criticism, this author, who unasked, and of his own free motion, declares, that he begins this work as a bare looker-on, has for more than ten years before he made this declaration, been sweating in the thickest dust, and heat of Doctor _Warburton_’s most ardent contention for novelties.¹ ¹ Critical enquiry, &c. published 1746. I have the Doctor’s own words for this, both for the novelties, and this gentleman’s wonderful zeal, and skill shewn in the defence of them, so many years ago.