Frost, Isaac: Six Baxter Oil Prints depicting the Muggletonian Universe London: G. Baxter, Patentee, 11 Northampton Square 1846
referred to in Revelation. After the Restoration Muggleton developed the doctrine that God no longer intervened in his creation, and that prayer, formal services and evangelism were therefore useless. Anti-Trinitarian and believing in the mortality of the soul - so that heaven (and hell) were to be found on earth, within man - the Muggletonians were fairly moderate. As their “services” typically took place in an inn or tavern, with the odd Biblical reading or singing of their “Divine Songs” over a few beers, they largely escaped persecution, although Muggleton was fined the enormous sum of £500 for blasphemy in 1676. As Muggletonians were not supposed to actively proselytize for new members - waiting for the faithful to approach them for enlightenment - it is entirely remarkable that Mr Philip Noakes, the last known member of this obscure seventeenth-century sect, died as recently as 1979; most of the movement’s archives then passed to the British Library. In the intervening three centuries the movement was small, but seemingly prosperous. Surviving publications are often of a high standard, and these prints are no exception. Baxter patented the technique of combining an intaglio image from a metal plate with colouring, using oil pigments, from woodblocks. The results are superb, but the process was not cheap, and Baxter was granted an extension of his patent in 1847 in part because he had not yet made a profit from it. Unknown at first to Courtney Lewis, Baxter’s bibliographer, our prints would only have been circulated within the closed ranks of the Muggletonians., Six plates, each approx. 19.5 x 28 cms, engraved by W.P. Chubb and Son after Isaac Frost, and Printed in Oil Colours by G Baxter. One or two trivial spots and stains, generally in excellent condition. The plates are as follows: Plate 1 – The Newtonian System of the Universe; Plate 3 – The Newtonian System; Plate 6 – The Newtonian System; Plate 7 – System According to the Holy Scriptures; Plate 9 - System According to the Holy Scriptures; Plate 10 - System According to the Holy Scriptures.
Isaac Frost was a scientist and prominent member of the Muggltonian sect in the mid nineteenth-century. He was instrumental in the refinement of the Muggletonian’s geocentric astronomical theory, as presented on the plates offered here, which were originally published under the title “Two Systems of Astronomy”. For example, Frost’s anti-Newtonian comment on plate 6 reads: “This diagram will show that if the Earth revolves round the Sun, as the Solar System states, then it will necessarily follow that the Earth will differ in its position with the Sun and any given fixed star on its equator, every day, throughout the whole year. Now consider is it so? If it is not so, then it will make much in favour of the Holy Scriptures, that the Sun revolves round the Earth”. The origins of the sect lie in the religious ferment of the Civil War period. In 1651-2 London tailor John Reeve (1608-1658) and his cousin Lodowick Muggleton (1609-1698) announced themselves to be the, two witnesses
£1500
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