The Scripture-Doctrine, of the Existence and Attributes of God, as manifested by the Works of Creation and Providence: In Twelve Sermons. To which is prefixed a Preface, in Answer to a late Pamphlet, intitled, Some Thoughts Concerning the Argument a priori. And an Appendix added, containing, A critical Explanation of the several Texts cited. Cambridge: J.Bentham, 1750.

KNOWLES, Thomas

About this Item

First edition, by the Cambridge divine Thomas Knowles (1723-1802). ESTC locates nine copies in the British Isles, one in Australia and none in North America. 'Knowles published a dozen or so works of theology. The Existence and Attributes of God Not Demonstrable A Priori (1746), is a reply to Phillips Glover s anonymous pamphlet The Argument a posteriori stated and considered. Knowles argues that an a priori proof of the existence of God is based on the possibility of an "eternal antecedent necessity". God cannot be both the cause and foundation of his own existence: to say that he exists in consequence of himself is to say that we have found out a cause, which is prior to the first and superior to the supreme which is absurd. He argues that this is to confuse priority as conception with priority as fact. Instead Knowles relies on an a posteriori argument concentrating on the evidence for the existence of God as first cause based to some extent on Bentley and also citing the Cambridge Platonist Cudworth. Truth, he asserts, derives from a necessity of nature but this is not antecedent to anything; instead it presupposes and depends on the actual existence of its object in nature. In this sense Knowles was typical of a certain school of Cambridge eighteenth-century thinkers such as Thomas Johnson and Thomas Rutherforth. In the same year that Knowles published his pamphlet, a reply, Some Thoughts concerning the Argument A Priori, appeared anonymously. One of his theological works, The Scripture Doctrine of the Existence and Attributes of God, refers to it in the Preface [as well as in the sub-title]' (Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century British Philosophers, Thoemmes Press, 1999). PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: 8vo, xxxiv, [x], 369, [1] pp., contemporary marbled covers rubbed and soiled, spine panel worn with 5cm loss at foot, title-page darkened towards edges and with 18th-century owners' names, a doodle in old pencil on p. 29, no browning but pages a bit crinkly with dampstaining towards the end of the volume. Seller Inventory # ABE-1642180555709

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Scripture-Doctrine, of the Existence and...

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Good