AN ANSWER TO DR. MAYHEW'S OBSERVATIONS ON THE CHARTER AND CONDUCT OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL IN FOREIGN PARTS.

Boston: 1764. 59pp, Disbound. Prominently margin-stained. Good.

The first American edition, originally printed in London earlier in Secker's pamphlet defended the Society and the Church of England against the attacks of Thomas Mayhew and Charles Chauncy, on an issue dramatically illustrating America's growing separation from the Mother Country: the establishment of the Church of England in the Colonies. "In Massachusetts the attack on the evil of an over-all establishment of religion was a response [to] the efforts of the Church of England to extend its influence into the heartland of American dissent." Bailyn Ideological Origins of the American Revolution 254.
Secker and his allies asserted that the Society's charter mandated conversion, not only of the Indians and Africans, but of white colonial 'heathen' as well. Thomas Mayhew, to whom Secker here responds and whose dissenting views mirrored American demands for political independence, warned that, if the Church of England were ever established in New England, religious oaths would be demanded as they were in England "and all of us [would] be taxed for the support of bishops and their underlings."
FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. Evans 9832. Adams Controversy 64-17. Item #10397

Price: $350.00

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