
FREE-THINKING
Defending!
the Immortality of the
Soul
&
also the
Necessity of a Revealed
Religion
Anonymous.
Free thoughts upon the discourse of free-thinking. London: John Pemberton, 1713.
8vo (19.8 cm, 7.8"). [4], 68 pp.
$400.00
First edition of this anonymously published, unattributed response to Anthony Collins's Discourse of Free-thinking. That controversial treatise, the groundbreaking work of the 17th- and 18th-century English Freethought movement, inspired numerous rebuttals, with the present item being one of the less commonly seen replies.
ESTC T96164. Recent marbled paper–covered boards, front cover with gilt-stamped leather title-label. Pages slightly age-toned, else clean. (20770)

Defending!
“Perfect
Freedom of Discussion”
Bailey, Samuel. Essays on the formation and publication of opinions and on other subjects. Philadelphia: R.W. Pomeroy (pr. by A. Waldie), 1831. 12mo (19.9 cm, 7.9"). [2 (adv.)], 240 pp.
$300.00
First U.S. edition, following the first London edition of 1821: Treatise on the nature of belief and opinion (and individual responsibility for both), and other issues of human perception and feeling. Bailey (1791–1870), an economist and philosopher, originally published the present work anonymously; it was much noticed at the time of its appearance for the impact of its arguments on questions of legal liability for freedom of expression.
American Imprints 5858. Uncut copy. Publisher's quarter red cloth and plain paper–covered sides, spine with printed paper label; binding rubbed/soiled, spine sunned/discolored, spine extremities chipped. Ex–social club library: traces of now-absent label at head of spine, bookplate on front pastedown, call number in a 19th-century hand on pastedown and front free endpaper. No other markings. Pages generally clean, with text block firm. (26284)
“Remarks” — A Reply
Bentley, Richard. Remarks upon a late discourse of free-thinking: In a letter to F.H. D.D. by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis. London: John Morphew, 1713. 8vo (19.8 cm, 7.75"). [2], [3]–85, [1(blank)] pp. (57/58 omitted in pagination).
$750.00


First edition of one of the best-known responses to Anthony Collins's landmark Discourse of Free-Thinking. Bentley's Remarks was considered a crushing rebuttal of Collins's treatise, and of deism as interpreted in the Discourse; the DNB says “Bentley destroyed any pretensions of Collins to thorough scholarship, exposed many gross blunders, and claimed Collins's principle of free inquiry as his own and that of all the orthodox believers.”
Click the interior image for an enlargement.
ESTC T53380. On Bentley's response to Collins, see: Dictionary of National Biography. Recent marbled paper–covered boards, front cover with gilt-stamped leather title-label. Title-page with author's name inked in an early hand, dedication with dedicatee's name (Francis Hare) inked in the same hand. Title-page with two spots of light staining; pages otherwise clean, with a very few early inked marginalia. (20745)

This
Classicist
Crushes
Collins?
Bentley, Richard. Remarks upon a late discourse of free-thinking: In a letter to F.H. D.D. by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis. Part the second. London: John Morphew & E. Curl, 1713. 8vo (19.7 cm, 7.75"). [4], 82, [2] pp.
$750.00


First edition of the second portion of one of the best-known responses to Anthony Collins's landmark Discourse of Free-Thinking. Bentley here takes up where he left off in the first part of the Remarks (considered a crushing rebuttal of Collins's treatise, and of deism as interpreted in the Discourse), moving on to assess many of the citations and classical references from p. 90
onwards of Collins's work. Writers whose words Bentley feels Collins misrepresented include Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Plutarch, Cato, and Cicero.
Click the interior image for an enlargement.
ESTC T53381. On Bentley's response to Collins, see: Dictionary of National Biography. Recent marbled paper–covered boards, front cover with gilt-stamped leather title-label. Faint crease lines occasionally visible, pages otherwise clean. (20751)
Prophecy
& Fulfillment
Set forth to Confute
Deism
Bible.
English. Selections. 1810. Selection of Old
Testament prophecies, concerning the Messiah, coupled with their fulfillment
in the New; exhibiting the solid foundation of the believer's hope, and the
best arguments for opposing the blasphemies of Deism. Boston: Pr. by Lincoln
& Edmands, 1810. 12mo. 12 pp.
$100.00
Click
the image for an enlargement.
A compilation of quotes from the Old Testament coupled with verses illustrating their
New Testament antitypes, and ending with a hymn.
Shaw & Shoemaker 19538.
Good. Removed from a nonce volume. Lightly browned with worming to title-page,
touching, but not obscuring, letters. (1170)
Charron, Pierre. De la sagesse. Paris: Jean-François Bastien, 1783. 8vo (20 cm, 7.9"). Frontis., xviii, 768 pp.; 1 plt. (damaged/censored).
$250.00
Click the interior images for enlargements.
Later printing of Charron’s final work, a philosophical treatise
which was first published in 1601 and which was strongly connected to Montaigne’s
essays. Although the author was a Catholic priest widely acclaimed for skillful
preaching, he and La Sagesse came under bitter attack by the clergy when
the work first appeared, on the grounds of its promoting skepticism and free
thinking.
This
particular copy seems to have incurred someone’s personal wrath, as the
plate illustrating the allegory of Wisdom has had its central (nude) female
figure excised. The much more staid frontispiece
portrait of the author, done by Pruneau, is undamaged.
Contemporary mottled calf framed in triple gilt fillets, spine
gilt extra, all page edges marbled; binding with expectable acid-pitting and
minor cracking of the leather over the spine and joints. One (and only one)
signature foxed, leaves otherwise clean. A handsome book, defaced in a way
that is depressing but also interesting.
“Ignorance
is the Foundation
of Atheism,
& Freethinking
the Cure”
Collins, Anthony. A discourse of free-thinking, occasion'd by the rise and growth of a sect call'd Free-thinkers. London: 1713. 8vo (19.8 cm, 7.8"). 178, iii–vi pp.
$950.00
First edition, early issue of a controversial work that spawned an extensive debate. The author, a close friend of John Locke and of freethinkers John Toland and Matthew Tindal, was a Cambridge-educated philosopher who, despite the furor over his writings, was acknowledged by his contemporaries as “an amiable and upright man . . . [who] made all readers welcome to the use of a free library” (DNB). His Discourse, an argument in favor of individual logical assessment of Christian doctrine and other beliefs, brought forth vigorous rebuttals by Richard Bentley, George Berkeley, Jonathan Swift, and others, but remains
a landmark work of
rationalistic religion. Opinions continue to vary, even in modern criticism, regarding whether Collins's work promoted deism or atheism; he himself claimed that increased independent critical thinking was responsible for the decline in belief in witchcraft.
Click the interior image for an enlargement.
This copy has the two preliminary leaves bound in at the back (mispaginated as vi as seen in most copies) , but it is lacking the final advertisement leaf. The catchword on p. 7 is “allow'd.”
ESTC T31966; Allibone 411–12. Recent marbled paper–covered boards, front cover with gilt-stamped leather title-label. Title-page with author's name inked in an early hand and with very elegant institutional pressure-stamp; title-page verso with shadows of pencilled numerals, first text page with inked numeral in lower margin. Final advertisement leaf lacking. Light offsetting and faint spotting (mostly confined to margins), pages otherwise clean. (20740)
[Collins,
Anthony]. A philosophical
inquiry concerning human liberty. The second edition corrected. London: R. Robinson,
1717. 8vo (18.8 cm, 7.375"). [1] f., vi pp., [1] f., 118 pp.
$800.00
Anthony Collins (1676–1729) was a deist, determinist, and
follower of Locke, who for all the fire of his anti-Christian polemic, was noted
to be “an amiable and upright man, and to have made all readers welcome
to the use of a free library” (DNB). His Philosophy Inquiry
Concerning Human Liberty, first published in 1717, is an ably argued case
for faith in reason and the exercise of it. This is the second edition, of the
same year—“corrected” and simply printed with a woodcut vignette
and tailpiece.
ESTC T134533. On Anthony Collins, see: The Dictionary of
National Biography, XI, 363–64. In recent blue-green wrappers; ex-library
with stamps, including a very, very faint one on title-page. Uncut;
traces of soiling in top margins, and occasional light ink-stains elsewhere.



“The Dissenting Cause is Founded on Reason & Truth”
Doddridge, Philip. Free thoughts on the most probable means of reviving the dissenting interest. Occasion'd by the late enquiry into the causes of its decay. London: Pr. for Richard Hett, 1730. 8vo (18.7 cm, 7.4"). 39, [1] pp.
$100.00
Click the image for an enlargement.
First edition. Doddridge was a prominent dissenting minister; the DNB calls the present pamphlet “his first important publication,” in which he replies to Strickland Gough's Enquiry with a clear, forceful statement of his beliefs on what the nature of dissenting religion should be.
ESTC T40185. On Doddridge, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online. Removed from a nonce volume. Title-page with early inked annotations of authorial identity; first few leaves with lightly pencilled bracketing in margins. (27656)
Cambridge
Contradicting Collins
. . .
Gentleman
of Cambridge. An answer to the discourse on free-thinking:
Wherein the absurdity and infidelity of the sect of free-thinkers is undeniably
demonstrated. London: John Morphew & A. Dodd, 1713. 8vo (19.7 cm, 7.75").
[8], 28 pp.
$300.00
First edition of this response to Anthony Collins's Discourse on Free-thinking, one of many published replies to Collins's landmark treatise on the role of independent critical thought in religion and philosophy. The present rebuttal is often assigned to Richard Bentley, although ESTC considers that an erroneous attribution.
ESTC T22052. Recent marbled paper–covered boards, front cover with gilt-stamped leather title-label. Pages clean. (20790)

BANGOR
Bangs
Collins .
. .
Hoadly, Benjamin. Queries recommended to the authors of the late discourse of free thinking ... the second edition. London: James Knapton, 1713. 8vo (19.7 cm, 7.75"). 31, [1] pp.
$300.00


Second edition of this response to Anthony Collins's much-debated Discourse of Free-thinking. Hoadly was an Anglican clergyman who served as bishop of Bangor; four years after his entry into the Freethinking controversy with the present rebuttal of what he considered atheist arguments made by Collins, he initiated the Bangorian Controversy with a sermon regarding the worldly authority of the church versus that of the state.
ESTC T18251. Recent marbled paper–covered boards, front cover with gilt-stamped leather title-label. Title-page with author's name inked in an early hand; pages slightly age-toned, otherwise clean. (20775)
Rebutting a
“Noted Infidel”
Lamber, Louis Aloisius. Rev. L. A. Lambert, LL.D. versus Col. R. G. Ingersoll. The Christmas sermon of the noted infidel dissected by the eminent doctor. Cleveland, Ohio: The Universe Publishing Company, n.d. [ca. 1900]. 16mo. Frontis. port., xxviii, 216 pp.
$15.00
With an introduction by J. L. Spalding.
Publisher's green cloth. Front pastedown with authorial bookplate. Spot of soil on frontispiece. Very good. (15749)

“A
Short
& Easy
Method
with the
Deists”
Leslie, Charles. A short and easy method with the deists:
wherein the certainty of the Christian religion is demonstrated, by infallible proof from four rules,
which are incompatible to any imposture that ever yet has been, or that can possibly be. In a letter to
a friend. Windsor, VT: Pr. by T.M. Pomroy, 1812. 12mo. 168 pp.
$150.00


The “friend” is Charles Leslie himself. This work also includes the author's Defense of
Episcopacy, and parts of his trial in Boston, where he was found guilty of libel for his defense of
episcopacy against presbyterianism and congregationalism.
Click the title page image for an enlargement.
Provenance: Property,
in 1836, of Henry G. Hubbard of Detroit.
Shaw &
Shoemaker 25848. Contemporary sheep. Spine with compartments divided by gilt
rules. Leather much rubbed with a little chipping. Browning from turn-ins onto endpapers and title-page. Top margins closely trimmed with loss of page numbers in some places. Inked ownership
inscriptions on recto of front free endpaper and title-page. (5442)
Owen,
Robert, & Alexander Campbell. Debate on the evidences of Christianity; containing an examination of the “social system,” ... reported by Charles H. Sims, Stenographer. Bethany, Va.: Pr. & pub. by Alexander Campbell, 1829. 8vo. 2 vols. in 1. 251, [1 (blank)] pp.; 301, [1 (blank)] pp.
$700.00

First edition of this account of the famous and important debate between the social reformer, atheist, and idealist Robert Owen (founder of New Llanark, etc.) and preacher, Christian, and educator Alexander Campbell (founder of Bethany College), that occurred in in Cincinnati in April, 1839. Includes an “appendix, written by the parties.”
Click the image at right for an enlargement.
Shoemaker 39945; Goldsmiths', Robert Owen, 1771-1858: Catalogue of an exhibition of printed books held in the Library of the University of London, 79a. Uncut copy, in original quarter cloth, with paper spine label. Binding worn, covers detached (such bindings are notoriously delicate), and with the usual amount of foxing to pages. Housed in a cloth clamshell box. A good copy.
TWO
Responses to
Anthony
Collins
Pycroft,
Samuel. A brief enquiry into free-thinking in matters of religion;
and some pretended obstructions to it ... Cambridge: Pr. at the University Press
for Edmund Jeffery & Jonah Bowyer, 1713. 8vo (19.8 cm, 7.75"). [2], 150,
[2 (errata)] pp. (lacking half-title). [bound with] Addenbrooke,
John. A short essay upon free-thinking. London: Jonah
Bowyer, 1714. 8vo. [8], 16 pp.
$500.00
Click the interior images for enlargements.
First editions of these two responses to Anthony Collins's landmark treatise on freethought (and on either deism or atheism, depending on one's interpretation), the Discourse of Free-Thinking. Numerous attacks on the Discourse were published, including rebuttals by Richard Bentley, George Berkeley, and Jonathan Swift; the present two pieces are more obscure (the second was written by a
physician far better remembered today for his founding of a hospital for the poor than for his writings), but offer interesting perspectives on contemporary thought.
Provenance: The first work's title-page has “Ex dono Autoris” inscribed in the upper margin in an early hand.
Pycroft: ESTC T144698; Allibone 1712. Addenbrooke: ESTC T88427.
Recent marbled paper–covered boards, front cover with gilt-stamped leather title-label. Pycroft half-title lacking; title-page with annotation as above. Pages slightly age-toned, with light spotting to final leaves of Enquiry and throughout Essay. (20760)
Saint-Pierre, Jacques Henri Bernardin de. A vindication of divine Providence; derived from a philosophic and moral survey, of nature and of man... first American edition. Worcester: J. Nancrede (pr. by Thomas, Son & Thomas), 1797. 8vo in 4s (20.2 cm, 7.9"). Frontis., 331, [1 (blank)] pp., lacking the folding map.
$250.00

First American edition of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Études de la nature, here in an English translation done by Henry Hunter; this defense of God’s existence makes use of natural history to affirm divine
authorship of the universe. Printed by Thomas, Son & Thomas (the famed Massachusetts printer Isaiah Thomas, in conjunction with his son Isaiah Thomas, Jr.), the present volume has an engraved frontispiece done by Samuel Hill, depicting Philocles in Samos.
This is the separate issue of vol. I, which was issued without the map and has “The End” at the bottom of p. 331—the two-volume issue has “End of first volume” instead.
This copy includes a pencilled marginal comment, commanding, “Read this if thou canst be an atheist — or
a fool.”
ESTC W36508; Bristol B10094; not in Evans. Contemporary treed sheep, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label and double gilt rules; binding with small scrapes and rubbed patches, upper board edge darkened, and leather starting to crack over the spine and joints. Without the folding map. First and last few leaves foxed.

Sermons from
“Silver-Tongued Smith”
Smith, Henry. The sermons of Master Henry Smith, gathered into one volume. Printed according to his corrected copies in his life time. [& others by the same author, as called for, as below]. London: Pr. by Thomas Harper, by the assignes of Ioan Man, and Benjamin Fisher, 1637. 4to (18.3 cm, 7.2"). 600 (593–600 bound in later in volume). [with, as called for, the same author's] God's arrow against atheists. London: Pr. by J.H. for Edward Brewster & Robert Bird, 1637. [4], 96 (i.e., 98) pp. [with] Three sermons made by Mr. Henry Smith. London: John Smethwick, 1637. 56 pp. [and with] Twelve
sermons, preached by Mr. Henry Smith. With prayers, both for the morning and evening thereunto adjoyned. London: Pr. by John Haviland for George Edwards, 1637. [254] pp.
$750.00
Click the interior images for enlargements.
Collection of sermons, originally published in 1591, by a prominent Church of England clergyman with Puritan inclinations. Smith (ca.1560–91) was renowned for his oratorical skills and persuasive preaching. His sermons were so popular that when he first delivered them, eager listeners allegedly stood in the alleys surrounding his overcrowded church; subsequent print versions were equally popular, and went through numerous editions, most containing the parts found here (and called for in some editions' tables of contents). ESTC notes that because “different publishers held the copyright of each book, editions were not often printed simultaneously. Therefore, each book is treated as a separate entity”; the DNB adds that “The bibliography of Smith's works is bewildering.”
For brief stretches of text in the first part of the present example, the typesetter appears to have run out of a few letters, necessitating a number of corrections which have been made in an early inked hand.
ESTC S103687; STC (rev.), 22734. ESTC S106857; STC (rev.) 22676. ESTC S104574; STC (rev.) 22747. ESTC S125529; STC (rev.) 22783. On Smith, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Later half black sheep in imitation of morocco with red marbled paper–covered boards; moderately rubbed. Ex-library: spine with faded traces of call number and label, front pastedown with institutional bookplate, rubber-stamp on bottom edges of closed book. Pp. 593–757 partially and very neatly paginated in red pen as in continuation of the first portion of the volume; some inked letter corrections as above. Pages age-toned, with intermittent moderate to dark spotting; final portion of volume with a few leaves waterstained. Shouldernotes occasionally shaved and page edges with occasional short tears. First two leaves with outer edges ragged; several with lower margins or outer corners repaired, in one case with loss of about ten words. On the whole, a volume that shows its age but is not giving in to it. (24098)

NOT
by a “Free-Thinker”
Whitehead, William Adee. The alleged atheism of the
Constitution. From the Northern Monthly for November, 1867. Newark: 1867. 8vo. 15, [1 (blank)]
pp.
$95.00
With a brief survey of early STATE-constitutional relationships to (Christian) religion.
NSTC 2W17788. Original wrappers, front wrapper chipped at
edges, back wrapper chipped at inner edge and with paper remnants affixed at top. Leaves loose
(wrappers included). Long tear in fore-margin of title-leaf and small chips in inner margins of title-
and final leaves. Some short marginal tears. Small chips to lower outer margins. Lengthwise fold
mark. (8931)
Woolley, Milton. The career of Jesus Christ: Being a supplement to the author’s Science of the Bible. Streator, IL: Free Press Publishing House, 1877. 8vo (20.7 cm, 8.2"). Frontis. (incl. in pagination), 52, [2] pp.; [60 (20 blank)] ff.
$600.00
Uncommon sole edition of this Freethinker interpretation of the New Testament, focusing on an astrological/astronomical analysis in which Jesus personifies “the annual Sun” and the events of the Gospels overall serve as a representation of the phenomena of the seasons. Wooley uses these “discoveries” to claim that Christianity as a religion is “a fraud of the blackest dye” (p. 51), adding that the working classes (former slaves explicitly included) are duped and oppressed by the capitalists (Northern and Southern) who encourage them to besot themselves with religion, whiskey, and tobacco rather than work towards real, liberating knowledge.
Click the image to the left
for an enlargement.
The printed Career is followed in this little volume by an extended manuscript section containing neatly written excerpts from Wooley’s Science of the Bible or an Analysis of the Hebrew Mythology.
Contemporary half calf over textured cloth, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label and gilt-ruled raised bands; front cover detached, leather scuffed. All page edges marbled. Upper portion of front free endpaper torn away; two front fly-leaves partially excised. Back free endpaper with pencilled owner’s name. Printed portion very slightly age-toned, with faint creasing to first section.
For
a short “shelf” devoted to
FREE PRESS/SPEECH
click
here.
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