Author: [FONTAINE (Nicholas)]:
Title: An Abridgment of the History of the Old and New Testament, interspersed with Moral and Instructive Reflections chiefly out of The Holy Father. By J. Reeve
Description: Exeter: Printed by R. Thorn, And Sold by Him, and T. Lewin..., London, 1780. FIRST EDITION of this abridgment. 8vo (in 4s), 173 x 108 mms., pp. [iii] iv - vii [vii Errata], 390, [3] 4 - 178, viii, [8 adverts], contemporary calf, red leather label; slight wear to joints and extremities, but a very good copy, with a ownership inscription on the recto of the front free end-paper that affirms a comment on the volume cited below: "Mary Weld/ Sales House Shepton Mallet Somersetshire/ This book belongs to the Monastery of the / Visitation of our Lady Sales House/ Shepton Mallet Somersetshire/ April 23d 1831." Mary Sales Weld was Mother Superior at the Monastery [sic] from 1810 to at least 1831. The Jesuit and Biblical scholar Joseph Reeve (1733–1820) wrote a number of ecclesiastical and theological works, but also turned out a rather good poem published in 1776, Ugbrooke Park. This abridgment proved to be popular and reached a fourth edition by 1795. However, not everyone was thrilled with the Roman Catholic overtones, and The Monthly Review suggested caution: "In this abridgement of the Sacred History, the reflections, moral and religious, which are interspersed, are sensible, useful and sometimes excellent: But it is necessary to warn our readers, that the principles of Popery are so interwoven with the historical and other passages of scripture, that the unwary may be misled, and brought to imagine that the tenets of the Church of Rome are founded on, or supported by, the Sacred Volume; than which nothing can be more false and erroneous. We therefore wonder, that in books of this kind, if published by Protestants, the exceptionable passages should not be omitted; or, at least, accompanied by some satisfactory guard, and antidote, for the sake of general readers, in a Protestant country." ESTC T150444 locates five copies in these islands, and Newberry and University of Texas in Austin; OCLC adds Pitts Theology at Emory, Cornell, St. Louis.

Keywords: Bible morality prose


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