by himself." He spent two years in preparing a
reply, which will never cease to be read and prized while the literature
of ancient Greece is studied in any part of the world. This reply
proved, not only that the letters ascribed to Phalaris were spurious,
but that Atterbury, with all his wit, his eloquence, his skill in
controversial fence, was the most audacious pretender that ever wrote
about what he did not understand. But to Atterbury this exposure was
matter of indifference. He was now engaged in a dispute about matters
far more important and exciting than the laws of Zaleucus and the laws
of Charondas. The rage of religious factions was extreme. High church
and Low church divided the nation. The great majority of the clergy were
on the high-church side; the majority of King William's bishops were
inclined to latitudinarianism. A dispute arose between the two parties
touching the extent of the powers of the Lower House of Convocation.
Atterbury thrust himself eagerly into the front rank of the
high-churchmen. Those who take a comprehensive and impartial view of his
whole career will not be disposed to give him credit for religious zeal.
But it was his nature to be vehement and pugnacious in the cause
of every fraternity of which he was a member. He had defended the
genuineness of a spurious book simply because Christchurch had put forth
an edition of that book; he now stood up for the clergy against the
civil power, simply because he was a clergyman, and for the priests
against the episcopal order, simply because he was as yet only a priest.
He asserted the pretensions of the class to which he belonged in several
treatises written with much wit, ingenuity, audacity, and acrimony. In
this, as in his first controversy, he was opposed to antagonists whose
knowledge of the subject in dispute was far superior to his; but in
this, as in his first controversy, he imposed on the multitude by bold
assertion, by sarcasm, by declamation, and, above all, by his peculiar
knack of exhibiting a little erudition in such a manner as to make it
look like a great deal. Having passed himself off on the world as a
greater master of classical learning than Bentley, he now passed himself
off as a greater master of ecclesiastical learning than Wake or Gibson.
By the great body of the clergy he was regarded as the ablest and
most intrepid tribune that had ever defended their rights against the
oligarchy of prelates. The lower House of Convoc