Marrin's Bookshop

Synopsis

To which are added, some reflections, miscellaneous observations, quotations, and queries, on the same subjects. by a presbyter of the church of england.

Item Description

FIRST EDITION. 12mo. 4 x 6.5 inches. xii + 227 pp. + [1].

Notes

The Attempt has been described as 'spirited, learned, disorganised... Robertson made explicit for Anglicans the same issues about subscription to humanly devised confessions that had divided the Irish dissenting community among which he had grown up... Drawing his philosophy from Lock and Holdall, he defended reason in the face of authority, and renounced sectarian subscription and the enforcement of creeds that were a legacy of obsolete metaphysics and an inducement to hypocrisy' (DNB). William Robertson (1705-83) was born in Dublin of dissenting Scottish parents and educated at the University of Glasgow. Returning to Dublin he was ordained in 1728 and held various Irish livings until 1764 when he decided that he could no longer accept the Athanasian creed and resigned, to make his living by writing with publication of the Attempt soon following. Back in England in 1768 he accepted the post of headmaster of the grammar school at Wolverhampton, which occupied him for the rest of his life. Two editions of this work were published in 1766, but this issue, printed for the author may have preceded that printed for W. Johnson in the same year. Later Dublin and London editions appeared 1767-68. This particular version is very scarce and ESTC records no copies in UK libraries and three in the US.