Samuel Bold - Works

Works

In 1688 he published A Brief Account of the Rise of the name Protestant, and what Protestantism is. By a professed Enemy to Persecution. In 1690 he engaged in a controversy with Thomas Comber, author of a Scholastical History of the Primitive and General Use of Liturgies in the Christian Church, which Bold perceived to be written to afford a pretext for persecuting dissent; in 1691 he followed it up with a second tract.

In 1697 he began his tracts in support of Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The Reasonableness of Christianity had appeared in 1695, and was attacked by Rev. John Edwards as a Socinian. Locke replied with a Vindication of his essay, to which Edwards answered in Socinianism Unmasked. At this point Bold entered the field, publishing in 1697 a Discourse on the true Knowledge of Christ Jesus, in which he insists, with Locke, that Christ and the apostles considered it enough for a Christian to believe that Jesus was the Christ. To the sermon he appended comments on Locke's essay and Vindication, declaring the essay 'one of the best books that had been published for at least 1,600 years,' and criticising Edwards's tracts. Edwards immediately retorted, and produced a second tract from Bold with a preface on the meaning of the terms "reason" and "antiquity" as employed in the Socinian controversy. This was in 1697; in 1698 a third tract of Bold's appeared, answering some Animadversions, published at Oxford. In 1699 he brought out a Consideration of the Objections to the Essay on the Human Understanding. Locke acknowledged Bold's support in his 'Second Vindication' of his essay; and in 1703 Bold visited Locke at Oates, Essex. He was then meditating the publication of further tracts which Locke dissuaded him from proceeding with. They were, however, published in 1706, and consist of a Discourse concerning the Resurrection of the Same Body and two letters on the necessary immateriality of created thinking substance. The letters discuss and condemn the views expressed in John Broughton's Psychologia and John Norris's Essay towards the Theory of an Ideal World. The discourse deals with Daniel Whitby's arguments against Locke.

In 1717 Bold's publisher brought out another tract demanding toleration; and in 1724 appeared his last controversial work, Some Thoughts concerning Church Authority. This was occasioned by Benjamin Hoadley's launching of the Bangorian Controversy, with a sermon on the nature of the kingdom of Christ, and his Preservative against the Principles and Practices of Nonjurors, of which Bold approved. Bold was answered by several persons, among others by Conyers Place, who condemned him as full of "stupid and affected cant".

In 1693 he published a devotional treatise entitled Christ's Importunity with Sinners to accept of Him, which had been probably already published in 1675. The republication contains an affectionate dedication to Mrs. Mary Cook, the widow of William Cook, his early tutor. In 1696, an epidemic having caused many deaths in his parish, he published eight Meditations on Death written during the leisure bodily distempers have afforded me. In the year before his death Bold published a Help to Devotion containing a short prayer on every chapter in the New Testament.