He tried to steer a middle path between the logical result of such Erastianism as that of the _Independent Whig_, on the one hand, and the excessive claim of High Churchmanship on the other.

Naturally enough, or the writer would not be Warburton, the book is full of tawdry rhetoric and stupid quibbles.

But the _Alliance between Church and State_ (1736) set the temper of speculation until the advent of Newman, and is therefore material for something more than contempt.

It acutely points out that societies generate a personality distinct from that of their members in words reminiscent of an historic legal pronouncement.[12] "When any number of men," he says, "form themselves into a society, whether civil or religious, this society becomes a body different from that aggregate which the number of individuals composed before the society was formed....

But a body must have its proper personality and will, which without these is no more than a shadow or a name." [Footnote 12: Dicey, _Law and Opinion in England_ (2nd edition), p.