The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume X. The Age of Johnson.
§ 9. Butler, Wilson and Waterland: A Review of the Doctrine of the Eucharist
But books and pamphlets such as Sherlock’s are at least on the fringe of that sad class of writings which Lamb stigmatised as biblia abiblia. We rise far above it when we come to the work of men so different as bishop Wilson, bishop Butler and Daniel Waterland. The three men were profoundly different. Wilson, in much of his thought and life, was a survival of the early seventeenth century and, indeed, of far earlier times. Waterland, in many respects, was typical of the early eighteenth century. Butler had affinities with the nineteenth—with Newman, for example, and Gladstone. The life of Wilson was uneventful. He took his degree from Trinity college, Dublin, and was ordained in the church of Ireland, served a Lancashire curacy, became chaplain to the earl of Derby and preceptor to his son at the salary of thirty pounds a year, to which was added the mastership of the Lathom almshouse, twenty pounds more—whereupon he had “an income far beyond his expectations, far beyond his wishes, except as it increased his ability to do good”—and, in 1697, was appointed by his patron to the bishopric of Sodor and Man, in spite of his refusal. At Bishop’s court, Kirk Michael, he lived, for nearly sixty years, the life of a primitive saint, devoted entirely to works of piety, the father of his people, not neglecting to punish as well as to protect. His collected works were not published till 1781; but many of them had long achieved a remarkable popularity. Of the eight volumes, four contain sermons, of a directness of appeal and simplicity of language unusual for the time. The English is forcible and unaffected; there are no pedantic expressions, or classical phrases, or lengthy words. Everyone could understand what Wilson said, and everyone might profit by it. He wrote, not to astonish, but to convince; yet the simplicity of his manner avoids the pit of commonplace into which such writers as Tillotson not rarely fall. No one could call the good bishop a great writer; but no one could call him a poor one. In his Maxims and his Parochialia, he shows a knowledge of human nature not very common among clergymen; while his Sacra Privata, which explains (to an intelligent reader) how this knowledge was obtained, places him with bishop Andrewes among the masters of English devotional literature.
Very different is the ponderous solidity of Daniel Waterland. He was a controversialist, a scholar and an archdeacon—callings which tend to dryness and pomposity and seldom encourage literary excellence. Master of Magdalene college, Cambridge, and vice-chancellor, he was recommended, says his biographer, “to the favour of the government” by his “wise and moderate sentiments,” but he did not attain to any great position in the church. He preferred, it may well be, to remain an adept in university business and a wielder of the cudgel against the heretics of his age, among whom several, such as Biddle, Firmin and Gilbert Clerke (to repeat the phrase used by bishop van Mildert nearly a century ago) “now scarcely retain a place in our recollection.” Samuel Clarke’s Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1712), amid all the heavy literature which it evoked, had no more successful rival than Waterland’s Vindication of Christ’s Divinity, which is almost worthy to be placed beside the work of bishop Bull; and this was but one of the writings of the Cambridge scholar which dealt with the subject. Waterland had long given attention to the claims of semi-Arians to hold office in the church of England, and, in a famous disputation, when he “kept a Divinity Act for his Bachelor of Divinity,” had had for his opponent (who was, of course, merely assuming the post of advocatus arianismi) Thomas Sherlock,