nt than he was; for Arnall never presumed to
conceal his turpitude under the gown and the scarf." But this
is mere invective!

[149] I have given a tempered opinion of his motive for this sudden
conversion from Attorneyship to Divinity; for it must not be
concealed, in our inquiry into Warburton's character, that he
has frequently been accused of a more worldly one. He was so
fierce an advocate for some important causes he undertook,
that his sincerity has been liable to suspicion; the pleader,
in some points, certainly acting the part of a sophist. Were
we to decide by the early appearances of his conduct, by the
rapid change of his profession, by his obsequious servility to
his country squire, and by what have been termed the hazardous
"fooleries in criticism, and outrages in controversy," which
he systematically pursued, he looks like one not in earnest;
and more zealous to maintain the character of his own genius,
than the cause he had espoused. Leland once exclaimed, "What
are we to think of the writer and his intentions? Is he really
sincere in his reasonings?" Certain it is, his paradoxes often
alarmed his friends, to repeat the words of a great critic, by
"the absurdity of his criticism, the heterodoxy of his tenets,
and the brutality of his invectives." Our Juvenal, who,
whatever might be the vehemence of his declamation, reflected
always those opinions which floated about him, has drawn a
full-length figure. He accounts for Warburton's early motive
in taking the cassock, as being

"------------thereto drawn
By some faint omens of the Lawn,
And on the truly Christian plan,
To make himself a gentleman:
A title, in which Form arrayed him,
Tho' Fate ne'er thought of when she made him.
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.
He wrote too of the Holy Ghost;
Of whom, no more than doth a post,
He knew; nor, should an angel show him,
Would he or know, or choose to know him."
CHURCHILL'S "Duellist."

I would not insinuate that Warburton is to be