WARBURTON, WILLtAm (1(198-1779). An English prelate and author• lie was born at Newark and was educated at the school of his na tiVP town, and a ftPrWank at thlhhalll in Butland shire, which he left in the year 1714, returning home to pursue the profession of his father, who had died some years before. He practiced as an attorney at Newark for some years, but his natural bent was toward literature, and be had all along expressed a desire to take orders in the Church of England. lie did so in and in 1728 beeame rector of 11rant-Broughton, in the diocese of Lincoln, where he remained for many years. Ile issued, in 1730, a treatise entitled The A //inner Betwet n Chnreh and Ntate, or the Netwssity and Equity of an Established Religion and a Test Law, In January, 1737-38, it was fol lowed by the first volume of the celebrated work, The Divine Legation of liosrs, DemOnstmted on the Principles of a Religious Deist, from the Omission of the Doetritie of a Future ;Ogle of Rewards and Punishments in thr deirish Dispen sation. In 1739 a new and revised edition of the first part of the work appeared. This was followed in 1741 by the publication of the second part. The third and concluding sec tion was published postlinnionsly. Becoming in volved in the controversy which followed the appearance of Pope's Essay on _Ilan, Warburton undertook the defense of the poet, and. in 1739
40, issued a series of seven letters, entitled A lindicalion of lir. Pope's Essay on Man, by the ?Author of the Dirine Legation. A warm friend ship was the result, which only terminated with the death of Pope in 1744.
Warburton's services to literature and religion did not for a long time bring him any sub stantial preferment. In 1757 he was promoted to the deanery of Bristol; and finally, in 1700, l'itt bestowed on him the Bishopric of Gloucester. In the later years of his life his mind became impaired; and lie was utterly prostrated by the loss of his only son, W110111 he did not long sur vive. He (lied at Gloucester.
Warburton was a keen polemic and deeply en gaged in all the intellectual warfare of his time. In nearly everything he wrote there is the ha press of a vigorous and fertile mind, with an arro gance of tone, which tends, in his treatment of adversaries, to degenerate into truculence and scurrility. His scholarship was never deep or accurate, though he had wide reading and un doubted intellectual vigor. A complete edition of his works, in 7 volumes, was published in 1758 by his friend, Bishop Hurd, who prefaced it with a biography (new edition, 12 rots.. 1811). Consult his biography by Watson ( London, 1503) ; also an essay in Mark Pattison. Essays (Oxford. 1889).