A Vindication of the Christian Religion. in Two Parts. I. A Discourse of the Nature and Use of Miracles. II. An Answer to a late Book entitled, A Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion.
London: Samuel Chandler, at the Cross-Keys in the Poultry, 1725. First Edition. Full-Leather. Good / No Jacket. Item #2327126
First edition. ESTC T64777. Rebacked by Green Dragon Bindery, preserving original boards and endpapers. GDB sticker on rear endpaper, small bookseller plate (Ebenezer Palmer of London) on front endpaper, bookworming to first third of pages, but only affecting text of prelims, owner blind stamp on front paste-down (Gregory G. Collins), light stain to base of first few pages, pencil marginalia on a few pages.
xxviii, 404 pp. Full leather, gilt titles and double rules, red morocco spine label, five raised spine bands. A discussion of miracles and prophecies in the Christian tradition, including a response to Anthony Collins's work on the topic. One of many works related to the controversy initiated by Conyers Middleton's Free enquiry into the miraculous powers supposed to have subsisted in the Christian church from the earliest ages (1748). Chandler's work was published before Middleton's, but in response to the same work. Leslie Stephen called Middleton's Free Enquiry 'incomparably the most effective [publication] of the whole deist controversy.' It was published the same year as Hume's first Enquiry which contains an essay, 'On Miracles.' Many years later, in My Own Life (London 1777), Hume confessed his chagrin: 'On my return from Italy, I had the mortification to find all England in a ferment, on account of Dr. Middleton's Free Enquiry, while my performance was entirely overlooked and neglected.' There was every reason to compare the two books, for the tendency of both was to undermine the belief in the miraculous. But whereas Hume was raising methodological difficulties about the possibility of providing adequate historical proof of such occurrences … Middleton was concerned primarily with the [adequacy of the] historical evidence actually available." - Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Price: $250.00