Nature Spiritualized: Aspects of Anti-Newtonianism

Abstract

In 1763 Bishop Warburton, whose notoriety had been achieved in large part at the expense of religious enthusiasm and freethinking, published a book asserting the orthodox doctrine of grace. The work was mainly an attack upon John Wesley and the Methodists, with some slashes at mysticism and William Law. These new enthusiasts preached the necessity of grace inspired directly by the spirit of God, and a faith in general which stressed the fallen and sinful nature of man and redemption through the love of Christ working within the soul. The surest proof of the existence and power of God lay in the human heart rather than in external evidence of any sort, and certainly not in human reason which, as the faculty of doubt and dissension, was itself primary evidence of man's weak and divided nature. This, examined in the contexts of Methodist and mystical testimony, Warburton deplored as horrid modern fanaticism. Wesley he sought to expose by ridiculing Methodists who had experienced miraculous powers of healing or the gift of tongues. Law he condemned as an infatuated man who had spent a lifetime hunting after and with incredible appetite devouring the trash dropt from every species of Mysticism, an obsession that reminded him of certain Eastern fanatics who solemnly vowed never to taste any food but what passed through the entrails of some impure or savage animal. ' Warburton's own faith in reason to determine the grounds of Christian belief was shown sensationally for the age in an immensely learned treatise-with dissertations on the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Eleusinian mysteries among other matters-arguing that though the historical religion of the Jews taught no idea of a future state of rewards and punishment, it was a divine dispensation nevertheless and thereby certified, against