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Waterland concludes this work, which is rather a practical than a controversial treatise, with some wise words of caution to those persons of 'more warmth than wisdom, who from a mistaken liberality would make light of heresy.
He so effectually assailed the position of Dr. Clarke and his friends that it has rarely been occupied by opponents of the Catholic doctrine in modern days. It has been thought desirable to present the great controversy in which Drs. Clarke and Waterland were respectively the leaders in one uninterrupted view.
So it stood for about 150 years before person was heard of in it, and it was later before being was mentioned. Therefore, if all the objection be against these, however innocent, expressions, let the objectors drop the name and accept the thing. It was no wish of Waterland to argue upon such mysteries at all.
Bishop Tomline expressed himself in much the same terms as Waterland had done; but was indignantly asked how, in his well-known treatise, he could possibly impose an altogether anti-Calvinistic sense upon the Articles without violation of their grammatical meaning, and without encouraging what the Calvinists of the day called 'the general present prevarication. A moderate Latitudinarianism in regard of subscription was after all more candid, as it certainly was more rational.
Such was the village of Waterland. The parish extended two miles north and south of the church, a few farms and labourers' cottages at wide intervals containing nearly all the rest of the population that was not resident in the village. It has been said that there were once two public-houses in Waterland, but that now there was but one.
When I have worked out the mind of Hooker, Bull, Waterland, &c., and read Freeman's "Principles," and Pusey's books, and Mr. Keble's, &c., then I want to think it out with the aid of a really well-read man. It is clearly better not to view such holy subjects in connection with controversy; but then comes the thought "How is Christendom to be united when this diversity exists on so great a point?"
Indeed the want of the Idea of the 1=3 could alone have prevented Waterland from inferring this from his own query II. and the texts cited by him pp. 28-38. The Father cannot be revealed except in and through the Son, his eternal 'exegesis'. The contrary position is an absurdity.
We may agree or disagree with his views, but we can never be in doubt what those views are. Had Waterland been of a warmer and more excitable temperament he might have been tempted to indulge in vague declamation or in that personal abusiveness which was only too common in the theological controversies of the day.
Antonius Lauterbach, and afterwards disposed into certain common-places by John Aurifaber, Doctor in Divinity. Translated by Capt. Henry Bell. The other 320 and more were really orthodox men, induced by artifices to subscribe a Creed which they understood in a good sense, but which, being worded in general terms, was capable of being perverted to a bad one." 'Waterland, Vindication', &c., c. vi.
You seldom look into a more kindly, patient face, or into an eye that more directly lets up the light out of a large, warm heart. His countenance is one sober shadow of honest brown, occasionally lighted by a true and guileless smile. William Waterland has seen the "island-of-ice." "It lies off there, two miles or more, grounded on a bank, in forty fathoms water."
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