MIDDLETON (Conyers):

A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers, Whi h are supposed to have sub isted in the Christian Church, From the Earliest Ages through seveal successive Centuries. By which it is shews, That we have no sufficient Reason to believe, upon the Authorit of the Primitive Fathers, That any such Poweres were continued to the Church, after the Days of the Apostles.

London: Printed R. Manby and H. S. Cox..., 1749. FIRST EDITION. Small 4to, 219 x 166 mms., pp. [iv], cxli [cxlii blank], 232 [233 - 252 Index], with notice to purchasers pasted on verso of half-title, contemporary quarter calf, black leather label, marbled boards (very worn); upper and lower front joint slightly cracked but a very good copy. David Hume had published an essay on miracles in his Philosophical Essay concerning Human Understanding in 1748, which, as he recorded in his autobiography by Middleton's work: "I had the Mortification to find all England in a Ferment on account of Dr. Middletons Free Enquiry; while my Performance was entirely overlooked and neglected." Middleton was at the centre of a number of controversies during his lifetime and to some extent afterwards. He was married three times, but he had no children by any of them. His third marriage was to the beautiful widow Ann Wilkins. She was a skilled musician and with her husband and his niece gave performances in their home, Horace Walpole neatly summed up gossip about her playing shuttlecock with former male acquaintances: "some young gentlemen of her former acquaintance, two in particular … while the good Doctor was writing against the Fathers and miracles in his study overhead, little suspecting that without any miracle he was in great danger of being made a father, without his participation" (cited in ODNB).

John Price Antiquarian BooksProfessional seller

Book number: 9285

Catalogue: Miracles

Keywords: miracles history of ideas prose

MIDDLETON (Conyers):

The Miscellaneous Works Of the late Reverend and Learned Conyers Middleton, D. D. Principal Library o the University of Cambridge. In Five Volumes. The Second Edition.

London, Printed for R. Manby... and H. S. Cox..., 1755. 5 volumes. 8vo, 200 x 118 mms., pp. [x], [iii] v - cxix [cxx blank], [123] - 427 [428 blank]; [iv], xxix [xxx blank] [ - 31] - 456; [iv], 468; [iv], 408; [iv], 372 [373 - 468 Index], engraved portrait of Middleton as frontispiece (off-setting on title-page), contemporary calf, red leather labels; tops and bases of spines slightly chipped, front joints slightly creased, but a good set. The autogrpah and date "Tho: Wickins/ 1788" appear on the recto of the front free end-paper in each volume. Middleton (1683 - 1850) was unusual among scholars, philosophers, and many men of letters, being, as Horace Walpole related "immoderately fond of music, and was himself a performer on the violin," an accomplishment that elicited Richard Bentley's immoderate remark that "a fiddler" rather than a scholar. He and Bently crossed scholarly swords on various occasions. His impressive life of Cicero was published in 1741, but it was his A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers (1749) that caused his reputation to suffer among his ecclesiastical colleagues. He was, as Brian Young remarks, "a thinker who was more than usually aware of the ambiguities at the core of his own heterodox assualt on the status of theological (and historical) orthodoxy in eighteenth century England" (Conyers Middleton: The Historical Consequences of Heterodoxy [2012]).

John Price Antiquarian BooksProfessional seller

Book number: 9286

Catalogue: Miracles

Keywords: miracles scholarship prose

WARBURTON (William):

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: Printed for Thomas Corbett, at Addison's-Head, without Temple-Bar. M.DCC.XXVII, 1737.. FIRST EDITION. 12m0 (in 6s), 158 x 91 mms., pp, [iii] iv - xxii [xxiii - xxiv blank], 137 [138 blan, 139 -142 Contents], contemporary sheepksin, with spine restored; edges worn, but a good copy with With signature of Robert Harry Inglis (1786-1855), 2nd Baronet, to the front endpaper, which he dates to 1808, plus Inglis's small circular ownership ink-stamp on the verso of the title leaf. There are a few pencil marks in the text, and in a 19th century hand at the end of the text, "Stolen most impudently from the Aeropagitica [Milton] & dispensed unconcerned with the theft."

John Price Antiquarian BooksProfessional seller

Book number: 10382

Catalogue: Miracles

Keywords: miracles History