De Origine Mali.: Authore Guiliemo King, S.T.D Episcopo Derensi.

HIS GREATEST WORK - FAMOUS IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY - HIS KINSMAN AND BIOGRAPHER'S COPY?

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King (Antrim 1650 - 1729), philosopher, churchman, and historian, the son of poor Presbyterian immigrants, was educated at T.C.D. where he joined the Anglican Church. He was ordained in 1674 and became Bishop of Derry and, from 1703, Archbishop of Dublin. He was an early member of the Dublin Philosophical Society founded by William Molyneux. He wrote the highly influential State of the Protestants of Ireland under the late King James's Government in 1691 to justify the change in allegiance to King William, but he opposed most of the penal laws and condemned the incomplete ratification of the Treaty of Limerick. He opposed the growth of English influence in Irish affairs in such as Church patronage and the economy (he supported Swift against Wood's halfpence). He supported the teaching of Irish in T.C.D. but, despite being himself from a Presbyterian family, consistently opposed the toleration of Presbyterianism. He tried to better the lot of the Irish poor and on his death bequeathed the bulk of his fortune to religious and philanthropic works. He left a library of over 7,000 volumes, much of which is in the GPA-Bolton library, Cashel, Co. Tipperary, now transferred to the University of Limerick.
King "holds an honourable place in the history of eighteenth century philosophy, and especially within the area of philosophical theology .. His reputation rests almost entirely on two works .. the Origin of Evil published in Latin in Dublin in (1702), and the shorter Sermon on Predestination (1709)" [Berman, preface to reprint of the latter, 1976].
"The problem of evil, considered as a theological problem - as the problem to which all theodicies are a response - may still be stated in much the same terms in which King presented it. How can a good and powerful God have created a world in which evil exists? The question is prompted by the fact that God, the uncaused First Cause, is supposed to be both infinitely good and infinitely powerful. But if God is so good and so powerful, how is it possible that both natural and moral evils should exist in the world that he has created?" [Thomas Duddy A History of Irish Thought, 2002]. King's philosophical analysis of this problem successively treated what appeared to humanity as natural evil (such as natural catastrophes, hunger, etc.) and then moral evil as it occurred from humanity's exercise of freedom of choice of action. His arguments for the reconciliation of the existence of evil with a perfect creator were highly influential, probably the most influential of the eighteenth century. This first Dublin edition was followed by a London edition in Latin in 1703, a Bremen edition in 1704, a translation into English in 1731 and several reprints of that up to 1781. Among the many replies that his work generated were ones from such leading figures as Leibnitz, Bayle and J. C. Wolf. While King did not publish replies to these he left notes which were included in a translation into English by Edmund Law published as An Essay on the Origin of Evil in 1731 after King's death. "Perhaps .. the most influential of eighteenth century theodicies" [A. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, 1960].
It is probable that the James King who owned and annotated this copy (and removed the then unnecessary errata leaf) was William King's grand-nephew and biographer Rev. James King (d.1759), son of the Rev. Thomas King of Swords. James King, Assistant Librarian of Marsh's Library from 1725 and the holder of several ecclesiastical offices attached to St. Patrick's Cathedral, contributed a 'Life of Archbishop King' to Bayle's Dictionary. Like his father he is buried in Swords. We have been unable as yet to obtain an example of this James King's signature.