Annet, Peter

From Philosopedia

Annet, Peter (1693 - 18 January 1769)

A prominent Deist in his time, Annet wrote An Examination of the History and Character of St. Paul (1747). The apostle, he declared, had become a Christian for financial reasons and was, in fact, a liar and a hypocrite. In the same year, he wrote Supernaturals Examined, which E. Graham Waring has described as being “a simpler form of David Hume’s argument that evidence on the side of the regularity of natural law must always be greater than evidence on the side of the exceptions to the law.”

According to J. M. Robertson, Annet stands between the earlier philosophic deists and the later propagandists of Thomas Paine's school. He seems to have been the first freethought lecturer. His essays, "A Collection of the Tracts of a certain Free Enquirer," are forcible but lack refinement.

Made a victim of the then strengthened spirit of persecution, he was "sentenced to stand thrice in the pillory with the label ‘For Blasphemy,’ and to suffer a year’s hard labour. Nevertheless, he was a popular enough freethinker to start a school on his release,” having invented a system of shorthand. In 1761, Annet began publishing Free Enquirer, a publication for which he was tried for blasphemy, convicted, and imprisoned at Newgate. {BDF; EU, E. Graham Waring; FUK; JMR; JMRH; RAT; RE; VI}