Bold, Samuel

Samuel Bold (or Bolde) was a Latitudinarian minister who defended John Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity and his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Bold published a series of pamphlets and short books which argued a theological position substantially identical to that of Locke. He also mounted a philosophical defence of Locke's definition of knowledge and his supposition that it was possible that God could, if he so wished, superadd to matter the power of thought. In a book on the theological issue of the resurrection of the same body he defended Locke's account of personal identity. Samuel Bold entered English public controversy in his Dorset ministries with a published sermon in defence of moderation for dissenters, followed by other controversial publications, including pamphlets in the late 1690s supporting Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity (Bold later surmised that Locke was the author of this anonymous work). He was also much impressed with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and, when this was attacked by John Edwards, he defended it in a further pamphlet, Some Considerations on the Principal Objections and Arguments Which have been Publish'd against Mr Lock's Essay of Humane Understanding (1699).