SOURCE: Greaves, R. W. “The Working of the Alliance: A Comment on Warburton.” In Essays in Modern English Church History: In Memory of Norman Sykes, edited by G. V. Bennett and J. D. Walsh, pp. 163-80. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1966.

In the following excerpt, Greaves discusses Warburton's essay The Alliance of Church and State.

That rumbustious ecclesiastical and literary controversialist, William Warburton, while yet an obscure country priest residing upon his cure, and but thirty-eight years of age, produced in 1736 one of the most remarkable and influential books of the century; closely, subtly and plausibly argued, and in language which was economical, yet at times forceful and vivid. His fundamental theme he expressed, after an excellent eighteenth century fashion, in his title, The Alliance of Church and State, and the Necessity and Equity of an Established Religion and a Test Law demonstrated, from the Essence and End of...