metaphysical systems of theology, and all schemes of virtue and
happiness purely rational; and therefore it was not long before he
was persuaded that the positions of Pope, as they terminated for the
most part in natural religion, were intended to draw mankind away
from revelation, and to represent the whole course of things as a
necessary concatenation of indissoluble fatality, and it is
undeniable that in many passages a religious eye may easily discover
expressions not very favourable to morals or to liberty.

About this time Warburton began to make his appearance in the first
ranks of learning. He was a man of vigorous faculties, a mind
fervid and vehement, supplied by incessant and unlimited inquiry,
with wonderful extent and variety of knowledge, which yet had not
oppressed his imagination nor clouded his perspicacity. To every
work he brought a memory full fraught, together with a fancy fertile
of original combinations and at once exerted the powers of the
scholar, the reasoner, and the wit. But his knowledge was too
multifarious to be always exact, and his pursuits were too eager to
be always cautions. His abilities gave him a haughty confidence,
which he disdained to conceal or mollify, and his impatience of
opposition disposed him to treat his adversaries with such
contemptuous superiority as made his readers commonly his enemies,
and excited against the advocate the wishes of some who favoured the
cause. He seems to have adopted the Roman Emperor's determination,
oderint dum metuant; he used no allurements of gentle language, but
wished to compel rather than persuade. His style is copious without
selection, and forcible without neatness. He took the words that
presented themselves. His diction is coarse and impure, and his
sentences are unmeasured. He had in the early part of his life
pleased himself with the notice of inferior wits, and corresponded