“In the age of EEBO, ECCO, the Gutenberg Project, the publication of four relatively obscure theological tracts in a hardback volume may seem unnecessary. A closer look, however, reveals the great worth of this publication for our understanding of religious controversy in the so-called Age of Reason. . . . Concise, elegant, and exceptionally well researched, the excellent editorial apparatus equips a reader new to the topic with enough information to follow what can be a dense tangle of assertion and rebuttal. . . . this collection is excellent.”

—Laura M. Stevens (University of Tulsa) in The Scriblerian

Above the Age of Reason: Miracles and Wonders in the Long Eighteenth Century, recovers and scrutinizes four non-canonical works representing different categories of miracles: Toussaint Bridoul's evaluation of prodigies, of odd things and events that have a supernatural resonance to them; Matthew Smith's (?) analysis of souls corporeal and incorporeal, human and animal, and the miracle of their coexistence; Thomas Sherlock's study of prophecy, miracles, clairvoyance, and prediction; and Thomas Woolston's examination of miracles as a phenomenon in their own right, with special emphasis on what might be called the classical miracles of the Bible. Together, these pamphlets compose a quartet of Enlightenment attitudes about events beyond the pale of "enlightened" rational thought, aptly figured against commentary from four leading scholars of the miraculous, prodigious, and wonderful.