98
“ART. XXVII. An Enquiry into the Pretensions of Richard Brothers, in Answer to Nathaniel Brassey Halhed. By a Freethinker. 8vo. 18. Sterl. Parsons, &c,” The American Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal, vol. 2, no. 2 (June 1795), pp.197–8.
Anonymous
While Hume’s essay “On Miracles” was generally well-known in colonial America, the 1790s witnessed a renewed interest in it that continued through to the 1840s. See, in Part II, selections #13, 15, 23, 26, and 27; and below, selection #116. Nathaniel Brassey Halhed (1751–1830) was a noted English Orientalist. The work to which “a Freethinker” responded, however, came out of Halhed’s discipleship of Richard Brothers (1757–1824), an Anglo-Israelite. Halhed’s Testimony of the Authenticity of the Prophecies of Richard Brothers was first published in London in 1795. The reference to “Dr. Adams” is to Dr. William Adams (1706–89) who had published an early response to Hume in An Essay on Mr. Hume’s Essay on Miracles (1752).
___________________________________
ART. XXVII. An Enquiry into the Pretensions of Richard Brothers, in Answer to Nathaniel Brassey Halhed. By a Freethinker. 8vo. 18. Sterl. Parsons, &c.
NOTHING but extremes with some people! This Freethinker neither believes in Mr. Brothers as a prophet, nor in any prophets ancient or modern; no, nor in any alleged miracle whatever! To shew his enmity to and contempt of the miraculous powers that have been ascribed to human beings, he has added to his inquiry a new edition of David Hume’s Essay on that subject; which performance he has harrowed up from the gulph of oblivion, whither it had long ago been consigned by the learned labours of Dr. Adams, &c. &c.