An Apology for the Bible; In a Series of Letters, Addressed to Thomas Paine, Author of a book entitled The Age of Reason, Part the Second, Being and Investigation of True and of Fabulous Theology.

WATSON, Richard.

$2,500.00

Item Number: 146706

Philadelphia: Printed for W. Young, Mills & Son, 1796.

Rare early printing of this response to Thomas Paine’s ‘The Age of Reason.’ Duodecimo, original full leather with gilt titles and ruling to the spine. In very good condition with rubbing to the extremities, front panel, and spine, some toning throughout, a small loss to the front flyleaf, and bookplates to the front free endpaper and pastedown. Many editions of this book were put out in the same year, all up and down the coast of Colonial America, all fairly small runs.

Written in the form of a series of letters to Thomas Paine, Anglican bishop and academic Richard Watson's book 'An Apology for the Bible' responded to Paine's 'The Age of Reason,' which argued for the philosophical position of deism. Paine's work inspired many free-thinkers to see the corruption of the Christian Church and to more openly embrace republicanism and sometimes even atheism. In Watson's view, he had "reason to believe, [An Apology for the Bible] was of singular service in stopping that torrent of irreligion which had been excited by [Paine's] writings," a book that some had called "the anti-Bible of all lower-class nineteenth-century infidel agitators."