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 expressed a wish to make the author's acquaintance.

Warburton was now coming within the range of preferment. In 1738 he had been made chaplain to the Prince of Wales. His books had already excited attention, and he was known to Bishops Hare and Sherlock. It does not appear whether the distinction indicated any particular influence. The prince himself was no great judge of literature. Pope, as soon as they became known to each other, introduced Warburton to the great men of his own circle. In 1741 he got an unnamed nobleman to promise ‘a large benefice’ to his new friend (, Works, ix. 217; and, p. 488). The promise was broken, but directly afterwards Pope told Warburton that Chesterfield ‘intended to serve him.’ Chesterfield was then in opposition, but on becoming lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1745 he offered to take Warburton as his chaplain. Warburton declined, but three years later showed his gratitude by dedicating a new edition of the ‘Alliance’ to Chesterfield. Pope also introduced Warburton to Murray (Lord Mansfield), who, when solicitor-general in 1746, induced the benchers of Lincoln's Inn to appoint him their preacher. The salary was small, and, as the office required attendance during term time, Allen made him spend the whole upon a house in Bedford Row. He kept it till at the beginning of 1757 he took a house in Grosvenor Square, which he occupied till his death. He was forced, he complains, to write sermons, and the completion of the ‘Divine Legation’ was indefinitely adjourned. The position, however, helped to make him known to powerful friends. In April 1753 Lord-chancellor Hardwicke, the father of his friend, Charles Yorke, gave him a prebend of small value in Gloucester Cathedral. In September 1754 he was appointed one of the king's chaplains in ordinary, and obtained the D.D. degree from the archbishop of Canterbury. In March 1755 he was appointed to a prebend worth 500l. a year at Durham, through the interest of Murray (now attorney-general) with Bishop Trevor. He resigned the Gloucester prebend, but held that at Durham in commendam after becoming a bishop. It was a tradition at Durham that Warburton was the first prebendary to give up wearing a cope, because the high collar ruffled his full-bottomed wig (Quarterly Review, xxxii. 273). At Durham he found a copy of Neal's ‘History of the Puritans,’ and made annotations, afterwards published by Hurd in his ‘Works.’ In 1756 he resigned Frisby, where he had left a Mr. Wright to take care of his financial matters and to provide a curate (Gent. Mag. March 1820). In September 1757 Warburton was made dean of Bristol by Pitt. Newcastle had told Allen some years before that if the deanery became vacant, he thought of recommending Warburton to the place, which had the advantage of being within reach of Prior Park. Allen was worth courting for his great influence in Bath; he was also on intimate terms with Pitt, who had just been elected for Bath (July 1757) with his support (Letters to Hurd, pp. 155, 257). The same influence no doubt helped to produce Warburton's elevation at the end of 1759 to the bishopric of Gloucester (consecrated 20 Jan. 1760). Hurd (Life of Warburton, p. 70) admits Allen's influence, but says that he had seen a letter in which Pitt declared that nothing of a private nature had given him so much pleasure as the elevation of Warburton to the bench.

During this period of steady rise in the church Warburton had written little. He had added something to new editions of the ‘Divine Legation’ and the ‘Alliance,’ but his main performances were two assaults upon sceptics. The first was a ‘View of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy’ (1754 and 1755), suggested by the publication in 1753 of his old enemy's posthumous ‘Works.’ Warburton's attack is as tiresome as the book assailed, and the style was so rude as to provoke a remonstrance from Murray in an anonymous letter, to which Warburton replied in an ‘Apology’ afterwards prefixed to the letters. Montesquieu, in return for a copy of the book, sent a very complimentary letter to the author. It was wrong, he said, to attack natural religion anywhere, and especially wrong to attack so moderate a form of revealed religion as that which prevailed in England. The second assault was ‘Remarks’ upon Hume's ‘Natural History of Religion,’ in which Hurd gave him some help. In order to conceal the authorship, it was called a letter to Warburton by ‘a Gentleman of Cambridge.’ Hume took it for Hurd's, and in his autobiographical sketch says ‘that the public entry’ of his book was ‘rather obscure, except only that Dr. Hurd wrote a pamphlet against it, with all the illiberal petulance, arrogance, and scurrility which distinguish the Warburtonian school. This pamphlet gave me some consolation for the otherwise indifferent reception of my performance’ (, Phil. Works, 1875, iii. 5). Warburton also thought of confuting Voltaire, but was persuaded by Hurd not to condescend to ‘break a butterfly upon a wheel’ (, Works, i. 105).

Hurd's relation to Warburton had become