Daily Inspiration Quote by William Warburton

A bishop-critic’s joke with teeth: Warburton turns theology into possessive slang. “Orthodoxy is my doxy” sounds almost like a tavern quip, collapsing sacred “right belief” into something private, chosen, even flirted with. The punchline lands in the second clause: “heterodoxy is another man’s doxy.” What you brand as deviant belief is, for someone else, simply belief. Heresy, in this framing, isn’t a metaphysical category; it’s a social label pinned on rivals.

The intent is double-edged. Warburton isn’t serenely relativist, dissolving truth into opinion. He’s exposing the mechanics of authority: doctrines gain their “orthodox” status because institutions, factions, and reputations enforce them. The line works because it’s compact and smug on purpose, mimicking the very confidence it undermines. It makes the reader feel how easily righteousness can be claimed, how quickly “error” becomes a synonym for “not us.”

Context matters. Warburton wrote in an England still managing the aftershocks of the Reformation: Anglicans, Catholics, Dissenters, Deists, and freethinkers jostling in the same public sphere. As a combative critic, he lived in pamphlet wars where doctrinal boundaries were weapons and “heterodox” could mean dangerous, disloyal, or merely inconvenient. The subtext is a warning to his own side: if your certainty depends on naming others as wrong, you’re already halfway admitting belief is, at least politically, a matter of ownership.