I don't know any of those four, but based on the descriptions of them, Atterbury would seem the likeliest, if only for the pot calling the kettle black factory.
Ding ding!
Congratulations on being the only person to answer correctly! When I read this quote from Bishop Atterbury, it made me think how in a different context it could just as easily be someone like Hume or Voltaire speaking. Hence I made this poll with four options - a religious Tory, an irreligious Whig, an irreligious Tory, and a religious Whig - because I wanted to see what people might assume about the quote author's religious and political leanings. I'm not surprised by the results, but to those who answered incorrectly I address the following:
Consider what this quote is really criticizing. Is it more aimed at Lutheranism or Catholicism? You might at first think it is primarily anti-Catholic, but remember that there was almost no one willing to defend Catholicism in England at this time, while there were many who felt a shared Protestant bond with Lutherans. The quote is therefore not attacking Popery, since everyone already knew it to be absurd, but rather attacking Lutheranism by putting it within the same degree of absurdity. Now ask yourself this: who would be more likely to criticize Lutheranism, a Whig or a Tory? Remembering that the former party advocated for greater toleration of Protestant Dissenters while the latter party strictly upheld Anglican orthodoxy, the answer should be obvious. The fact that Atterbury was a Jacobite should have been a further clue, since the native religion of the Hanoverian dynasty was Lutheranism; indeed, the quote originates from an attack by the Bishop on King George's faith (though it kind of undermines his point to declare the Stuart religion even more absurd). But might a more radical Protestant or deist also criticize Lutheranism, only from a Low Church or skeptical perspective? Perhaps, but the fact that Lutherans and other non-Anglican Protestants were targeted by the Tories for discrimination meant that those more amenable to religious toleration, as Low Churchers and skeptics were, preferred to focus their ire on that one great enemy of religious and political liberty, Popery. To illustrate this dynamic, I'll end with a quote from Richard Price, the "religious Whig" option in this poll, on the Glorious Revolution:
Had it not been for this deliverance, the probability is that, instead of being thus distinguished, we should now have been a base people, groaning under the infamy and misery of popery and slavery.
Poll
