Friday, July 3, 2009

Priestcraft




Priestcraft in Perfection, or, A Detection of the Fraud of Inserting and Continuting this Clause (The Church Hath Power To Decree Rites and Ceremonys, and Authority in Controversye of Faith) in the Twentieth Article of the Articles of the Church of England
/ Anthony Collins (1676-1729). London : printed for B. Bragg in Pater-Noster-Row, 1710.

I think many people must have read Howard Fish's printed warning inside the front cover of the book, and decided, after all, not to borrow it.



I cataloged this book for the San Francisco library where I work, and discovered that a second work, published 19 years later than Priestcraft, had been bound in with it. Below is the title page of this unexpected second work.


A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing, in a Letter to the Reverend Dr. Nathaniel Marshall. London, J. Brotherton, 1729. This book concerns one of the many theological wars of words that flourished among our ancestors. Many were wounded in these wars, and this writer appears to number himself among them.