Wickedness is Hard Work
A Moral Paradox: Maintaining, that it is much Easier to be Vertuous then Vitious.
London: Printed by T[homas].B[roun], 1685.
Price: $300.00
About the item
Third Edition. 89pp. 1 vols. Small 12mo. Wickedness is Hard Work. In a very attractive binding of full crushed red levant morocco, by BRADSTREET. Small slip pasted over name of a previous owner on flyleaf. Wing M178.
Item #16076
With the bookplate of the Rev. Anson Phelps Stokes on the front pastedown, and inscribed on the first blank to his father: “F.B. Sanbborn to Anson Phelps Stokes. October 1903.” F.B. Sanborn was friend and editor of Henry David Thoreau. Mackenzie was king’s advocate during the period the period of covenanting persecution, and, according tot he DNB, his career as a public prosecutor“can only be defended if in law, as in love and war, ‘all things are fair.’” He is known to this day in Scotland as “Bloody Mackenzie.” Mackenzie’s little essay in moral philosophy — whose basic argument is that it it much more inconvenient and harder work to be wicked — was first printed in 1667 (Wing M 181). Subsequent editions were incorporated into his book, Moral Gallantry, with a separate title-page.