Hall, Robert. Modern Infidelity Considered with respect to its Influence on Society : in a Sermon, preached at the Baptist Meeting, Cambridge. Charlestown: Printed and Sold by Samuel Etheridge, 1801. First American, from the Third English Edition. [11632]
Sewn into a new acid-free wrapper, 8 x 5 inches, 55 pp., several lines with pencil underlining. Printed in old font. Good. Pamphlet.
See Starr, A Baptist Bibliography, no. H766 for a later edition. This edition not in Starr.
The text is Ephesians 2:12, "Without God in the world." "...the more immediate object of this discourse, which, as has already been intimated, is not so much to evince the falsehood of skepticism as a theory, as to display its mischievous effects, contrasted with those which result from the belief of a Deity and a future state." - p. 12.
Robert Hall (1764-1831), “one of the most eminent of modern divines.” – Allibone. An English Baptist, the son of a Baptist minister, and something of a child prodigy. “Before he was nine years of age he had perused and reperused, with intense interest, the treatises of the profound and extraordinary thinker, Jonathan Edwards, on the ‘Affections’ and on the ‘Will.’ About the same time he read, with a like interest, ‘Butler’s Analogy.’ Before he was ten years old he had written many essays, principally on religious subjects, and often invited his brothers and sisters to hear him preach.” – Dr. Olinthus Gregory.
At the age of 12 he was sent to the boarding school of the Baptist minister John Ryland. He began preaching publicly at age 16 and after 12 years of arduous labor suffered a mental collapse. After a two-year rest he returned and enjoyed a long and fruitful ministry both in the pulpit and the press.
"From Calvinism he advanced to Arminianism, and was rather a dualist than a trinitarian, never losing faith in the divinity and atonement of our Lord...Hall's fame rests mainly on the tradition of his pulpit oratory, which fascinated many minds of a high order. His eloquence recommended evangelical religion to persons of taste. Dugald Stewart commends his writings as exhibiting 'the English language in its perfection,' which is certainly extravagant praise. His conversation, of which some fragments are preserved, was brilliant when his powers were roused by intellectual society." - DNB.
