A Critical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Causes of Prodigies and Miracles, as related by Historians. With an Essay towards restoring a Method and Purity in History. In Which, The Characters of the most celebrated Writers of every Age, and of the several Stages and Species of History, are occasionally criticized and explained. In two parts. London: Thomas Corbett, 1727.

WARBURTON, William

About this Item

First edition of a scarce early work by the leading religious polemicist and sometime Bishop of Gloucester, William Warburton (1698-1779). 'Warburton s first publication of any note was an anonymously published anti-Catholic and anti-deist tract entitled A Critical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Causes of Prodigies and Miracles (1727). In this work which he later disowned to the extent of buying up copies and destroying them he laid down a theory of why the ancients had been more credulous than the moderns as to the meaning and reality of prodigies and portents. He defended the miracles of the early Christian centuries as necessary truths, serving as impressive witnesses to the veracity of the faith, while he distinguished them from purely Roman Catholic MIRACLES, which he dismissed as credulous impostures' (Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century British Philosophers, Thoemmes Press, 1999). PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: 12mo, xxii, 137, [6] pp., contemporary gilt-panelled calf, spine with floral motif in compartments, rubbed and scraped, joints starting at foot but firm, armorial bookplate of Henry Howard, 4th Earl of Berkshire dated 1720, internally clean, a very good copy. Seller Inventory # ABE-1651676730555

Bibliographic Details

Title: A Critical and Philosophical Enquiry into ...

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Very Good