11th Sep, 2019 10:30 GMT/BST

Books, Maps & Ephemera

 
Lot 217
 

217

Clarke, Samuel A Discourse Concerning the Being and Attributes of God, The Obligations of...

Clarke, Samuel
A Discourse Concerning the Being and Attributes of God, The Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation bound with A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation bound with Several Letters to the Reverend Dr. Clarke, from a Gentleman in Glocestershire, relating to the First Volumes of the Foregoing Sermons; with the Dr's Answers Thereunto. Printed for W. Botham for James Knapton, 1719. 8vo, full panelled calf, lacking morocco lettering-piece. Fifth corrected editions of first two, second ed. of the last.
Clarke was a Cambridge-educated polymath at a time when the traditional ideas of broad knowledge of all subjects were withering against the increasing specialisation of education. He was a noted natural philosopher and early Newtonian, whose work sped the replacement of Cartesian systems with Newton's in the Cambridge syllabus. He was also though a philosopher and theologian, and whilst his first theological publication was a relatively uncontroversial effort, he shot to fame with his next work.

In 1704 and 1705 Clarke was selected to deliver the Boyle lectures - successive lectures being a great distinction - because of the combination of mathematics, philosophy and divinity which he offered. These two lectures, printed here, were an answer to Hobbes and associated thinkers on the nature of Liberty, but enlarged from that to aim to prove God's existence through reason. The two separated lectures show the orthodox contemporary view that it was possible to distinguish between natural and revealed religion (the former open to human reason, the latter a personal and confirming experience). As Clarke himself argued, no one could believe in Christ without first believing in God. This was not the perception of all critics who suggested that Clarke might have proven the natural existence of God, but what happened to the Fable of Jesus Christ? What is striking are the clear signs of Clarke's Newtonian training and mathematical background. His metaphysics were constructed in mathematical reasoning and he allied elements of Newtonian science to allow and imply an invisible but necessary directing Providential force. Clarke's genius was not to see the newly developing fields of science as being an enemy of theological interests, but rather an inherent part of God's great design, and thus something to be accommodated within the theological framework. As the great natural philosophers before him, he saw science as a tool for understanding the invisible God through God's visible creation.

Sold for £40
Estimated at £60 - £100


 

Auction: Books, Maps & Ephemera, 11th Sep, 2019

Books, Maps & Ephemera

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