Author: MIDDLETON (Conyers):
Title: 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.
Description: 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).

Keywords: miracles history of ideas prose


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