Tan leather spine with green title plate (Sherock) with gilt title. Tan and red marbled boards.

A seminal Book

In reply to Thomas Woolston’s Discourses on the Miracles Thomas Sherlock wrote a volume entitled The Tryal of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus (1729), which soon ran through fourteen editions

The Gentleman’s observation, that the general belief of the resurrection creates a presumption that it stands upon good evidence, and therefore people look no farther, but follow their fathers, as their fathers did their grandfathers did before them, is in great measure true, but it is a truth nothing to his purpose. -from The Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus One of the most famous-and least read-works of Christian apologetics, this is Anglican bishop Thomas Sherlock’s classic 1729 rebuttal to Deist Thomas Woolston’s skeptical Discourses of the Miracles of Jesus Christ (1728-1729). Within the framework of a courtroom proceeding in which the Apostles are on trial for faking the Resurrection, Sherlock pits Woolston’s own arguments against his own powerful defence of the “accused.” Applying the logic and reason of the law to the Bible, this is a provocative and original interpretation of the story of Jesus’ life and death. British theologian THOMAS SHERLOCK (1678-1761) was educated at Eton and Cambridge and served as a Church of England bishop for 33 years.

Thomas Sherlock (1678 – 18 July 1761) PC was a British divine who served as a Church of England bishop for 33 years. He is also noted in church history as an important contributor to Christian apologetics. He published against Anthony Collins’s deistic Grounds of the Christian Religion a volume of sermons entitled The Use and Intent of Prophecy in the Several Ages of the World (1725); and in reply to Thomas Woolston’s Discourses on the Miracles he wrote a volume entitled The Tryal of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus (1729), which soon ran through fourteen editions. His Pastoral Letter (1750) on the late earthquakes had a circulation of many thousands, and four or five volumes of Sermons which he published in his later years (1754–1758) were also at one time highly esteemed.  Jane Austen, wrote to her niece Anna in 1814, “I am very fond of Sherlock’s Sermons, prefer them to almost any.”

A collected edition of his works, with a memoir, in five volumes, by Thomas Smart Hughes, appeared in 1830.

Sherlock’s Tryal of the Witnesses is generally understood by scholars such as Edward Carpenter, Colin Brown and William Lane Craig, to be a work that the Scottish philosopher David Hume had probably read, and to which Hume offered a counter viewpoint in his empiricist arguments against the possibility of miracles.

Sherlock also wrote a respected work entitled A Discourse Concerning the Divine Providence, in which he argues that the Sovereignty and Providence of God are unimpeachable.

Since the Deist controversy Sherlock’s argument for the evidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ has continued to interest later Christian apologists such as William Lane Craig and John Warwick Montgomery. His place in the history of apologetics has been classified by Ross Clifford as belonging to the legal or juridical school of Christian apologetics.

Christian apologetics (“verbal defence, speech in defence”) is a branch of Christian theology that defends Christianity against objections.

Christian apologetics has taken many forms over the centuries, starting with Paul the Apostle in the early church and Patristic writers such as Origen, Augustine of Hippo, Justin Martyr and Tertullian, then continuing with writers such as Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and Anselm of Canterbury during Scholasticism.

Blaise Pascal was an active Christian apologist before the Age of Enlightenment. In the modern period, Christianity was defended through the efforts of many authors such as G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis, as well as G. E. M. Anscombe.

In contemporary times, Christianity is defended through the work of figures such as Peter Kreeft, Norman Geisler, Robert Barron, Scott Hahn, John Lennox, Lee Strobel, Francis Collins, Alvin Plantinga, Ken Ham, Hugh Ross, James White, Gary Habermas, Frank Turek, Michael Licona, and William Lane Craig.

The Deist Controversy was an extended debate that took place first in England and then Continental Europe roughly from the late 1600s through the mid-1700s. The deists, most of whom believed that there was a god worthy of worship who had created the world, denied special divine action beyond creation. Hence, they claimed that Christianity as a revealed religion was false or even contemptible. A wide array of scholars responded to the deists and the resulting arguments shaped a landscape of ideas that persists to the present day.