| The complete title to this work is: ROBERT BARCLAY'S APOLOGY FOR THE TRUE CHRISTIAN DIVINITY VINDICATED FROM JOHN BROWN's EXAMINATION AND PRETENDED CONFUTATION THEREOF, IN HIS BOOK, CALLED, QUAKERISME THE PATH-WAY TO PAGANISME. In which vindication I.B. his many gross perversions and abuses are discovered, and his furious and violent Railings and Revilings soberly rebuked, by R.B. Whereunto is added A Christian and Friendly Expostulation with Robert Macquare, touching his Postcript to the said book of J.B. written to him by Lillias Skein, wife of Alexander Skein, and delivered some moneths since at his house in Rotterdam. This volume is a first edition printed at London in the Year 1679. And are to be sold by Benjamin Clerk, Stationer, in Georgeyard Lumberstreet, At London. Opposite the title page is an advertisement and errata, providing evidence that this volume was indeed the first edition. (In later editions, the errata would be worked into the text as necessary.) The first English edition of the Apology For The True Christian Divinity was published in 1678. But it came under attack during that same year of its publication in English by the Scottish theologian, John Brown. And so Barclay re-wrote the Apology with additional arguments to confute Brown's statements, and the result was the publication, in the following year, 1679 of this book, being an updated version of his original. This 'corrected' Apology is considered to be the authority on the Quaker faith. I also possess a fourth edition of this work, printed in the year 1701, which will appear later in this gallery. |
