8vo. 171pp, [1]. Uncut in original publisher's blue paper boards, rebacked, printed paper lettering-piece to spine. Worn and faded, with loss to corner of upper board. Inked initials C.C to head of FFEP, further initials to head of title. Light scattered spotting throughout.

The first edition of an address by Sir Richard Hill, Second Baronet (1733-1808), attacking the arguments of Martin Madan (1726-1790), English barrister, clergyman and writer. In 1780, Madan generated swathes of controversy after publishing Thelyphthora, or A Treatise on Female Ruin, which promoted polygamy as an antidote for evils he deplored. His arguments were largely scriptural, but the responses to the work were hot-tempered and multitudinous - among the others were 'Anti-Thelyphthora' by his first cousin William Cowper, published anonymously.

Hill wrote two responses to Madan in the same year, with this volume preceding The Cobler's Letter to the Author of Thelyphthora. A religious controversialist, Hill was no stranger to scathing theological debate, having engaged in pamphlet wars at Oxford University over the expulsion of several Methodist students, and thenceforth entering into complex intra-Methodist arguments between the Arminian and Calvinist factions. Later in life, he became embroiled in a feud with High-Church Anglican apologist Charles Daubeny, during which he affectionately defended evangelical clergymen.