A Comprehensive View of the various Controversies among Pagans, Mahometans, Jews, and Christians. Philosophical and Theological. In which is shewn, I. Wherein the various parties agree. II. Wherein they differ. III. The differences adjusted, and the absurd opinions and parties refuted. Being a Compendious Polemical System. By the author of The Design of Creation.

FIRST EDITION, title-page with offsets from binding turn-ins, minor damp-stain in upper margin right at the end, a slight tendency to browning, pp. 311, [1], 8vo, disbound from a larger volume. Ray (1753-1837) was Pastor of the Congregationalist church in Sudbury for 63 years. His best known work, Christian Liberty, was published in 1789. The present edition is in ESTC, but anonymously. The 1790 John Murray edition refers to this as the first edition. Apart from the referral here, repeated in Avis á tout le monde touchant la liberté, ?Edinburgh, ?1792 (ESTC N33425), the Design of Creation seem to have sunk without trace. This is more about the divisions within Christianity, 'Pagans, Mahometans, Jews' being dealt with in pp. 15-76. The various schisms of the Christian church, including topical ones (notably in Scotland), take up most of the remaining chapters, though there are a few on general topics, including slavery. Ray was an influential member of the Suffolk County Association, which, according to an obituary notice in The Congregational Magazine, 'has the distinction of being the first religious body of dissenters that declared their abhorrence of slavery.' 4 copies only in ESTC: BL, NLS, EUL, St. Andrews. Cf ESTC N52298. (ESTC T93526).