Name/Title
The Religion of Nature DelineatedDescription
There is no doubt or argument that Franklin worked on William Wollaston’s “The Religion of Nature Delineated, London, Printed by Samuel Palmer, Bartholomew close, 1726.” The discussion is which on which edition he worked. Some argue that the Franklin edition was the 1724 edition, but that cannot be the case as Franklin himself states in his autobiography: “We arrived in London the 24th of December in 1724…I immediately got to work at Palmer’s, then a famous printing house in Bartholomew Close, and here I continued for near a year…At Palmer’s I was employed in composing for the second edition of “Wollaston’s Religion of Nature.”
Henry Stevens gives this, the edition of 1726 as the Franklin Edition. On this book Franklin probably imbedded his short-lived free notions that appeared in his “Liberty and Necessity.”
These facts are established: Franklin worked in 1725 as a compositor on the second edition of Wollaston's "Religion of Nature," printed by Samuel Palmer.
That book was published on large paper, and originally issued in a small private edition in 1722. Lowndes gives the edition of 1724 by title. Now as Franklin says that he worked only for "near a year," from December 1724, it is plain that if there was an edition of 1724 Franklin knew of it as the first, that the 1725, which he considered the second, was the one, rather than that of 1726, on which he worked, and that the London, 1726 edition, has no Franklin association interest. But Stevens and the Dodd, Mead catalogue appear to consider the 1726 edition as the second.
In the absence of the 1725 edition this might be accepted, but there has recently come into the possession of a member of the Club of Odd Volumes of this city, a copy of the
"Religion of Nature Delineated," which is on large paper and which bears the im-print:
London. Printed by S. Palmer and sold by B. Lintott, W & J Innis, J. Osborne, J. Batley, and T. Longman, 1725.
This shows plainly which is the “Franklin” edition of the work (the 1725), and the collector who has this volume possesses a franklin item of the highest interest.Other Names and Numbers
Other Numbers
Number Type
ReferencesOther Number
LOC BL180 .W6 1725 Franklin Coll;