RELIGION

Backus’sOwn Abridgment of Backus — First Edition

•  First edition: Backus’s own condensed version of his three-volume history (which originally appeared in 1777, 1784, and 1796), updating the chronology to the year of this publication and adding some incidents passed over by the larger work. A Separatist minister, delegate to the First Continental Congress, and founding father of the college that became Brown University, Isaac Backus here describes the origins of the Baptist movement in the United States, as well as the movement’s “latter day glory.”

•  Howes B14; Sabin 2626; Shaw & Shoemaker 5751. Contemporary speckled sheep, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label; leather with small spots of discoloration, joints cracked, spine with call number. Front pastedown with institutional bookplates and stamped numeral, title-page with early inked ownership inscription in upper portion and with institutional pressure-stamp, preface with stamped numeral in lower margin, first text page with pressure-stamp, all edges rubber-stamped. Pages slightly age-toned, with some light spotting.

Women's Lives . . .

•  Later edition of these accounts of the lives of Eliza Astor Rumpff and Albertine Ida Gustavine de Stael-Holstein, Duchess de Broglie, preceded by an engraved portrait of the former and by Lydia Sigourney's poem "Transplanted Flowers." Memorialized more briefly are Mrs. Grandpierre and Mrs. Monod.

•  Publisher's blind-stamped textured cloth, spine gilt-stamped; binding lightly worn, with spine gilt rubbed and dimmed. Front pastedown with bookplate of J.E. Vanderhoef, front free endpaper with early inked inscription of Susan A. Baker. Some foxing to endpapers and a few scattered spots to pages; internally mostly clean. (8958)

A Marblehead Puritan Printed in London
forBoston Distribution

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•  Barnard (1681–1770) was a Puritan pastor of a church in Marblehead, Mass., and famous for his passion and ability as a preacher. This work is uncommon in that it was printed in London for two Boston booksellers.

•  Sabin 3471; ESTC T65667; not in Alden & Landis.   Contemporary sheep, modestly tooled in blind; leather dry and abraded. Ex-library with call number on spine, shelf marks in pencil, bookplate on front pastedown, and rubber-stamp on title-page. (20159)

A Luxurious Production — An Interesting Provenance

•  Early edition, following the first of 1853. The volume is illustrated with a total of 28 steel-engraved plates (including the frontispiece and additional engraved title-page) and a number of in-text woodcuts, all done after designs by the author, who was best known as an artist and topographical draftsman.

Binding: Publisher’s embossed morocco, spine with raised bands and blind-tooled decorations in compartments; all edges gilt.

Provenance: Presented to a library by Robert E. Keighton, a distinguished professor of homiletics from whom Dr. Martin Luther King is reported to have taken most of his nine seminary courses in pastoral rhetoric.

•  Sabin 3789; NSTC 2B10634; King connection noted in: Lischer, Richard. The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Word that Moved America (Oxford, 1997), p. 64. Binding slightly rubbed at edges, extremities, and joints. Front pastedown with institutional bookplate, title-page pressure-stamped, contents page with inked notation in inner margin and stamped numeral in lower margin, back pastedown with pocket. Some light foxing, including spots to a few plates; plates with minor offsetting around guard leaves.

“Opera quae exstant”NOT

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•  One of several editions all printed in 1596, all bearing the same title, and all claiming to be “Opera quae exstant,” but differing in significant ways: Some editions are in Greek and Latin; some have as place of printing “Lugduni” and others have no place. The present edition contains only the homilies and is entirely in Greek.

Provenance:  Early 19th-century armorial bookplate of Robert Chambers; manuscript ownership “Ex libris G.R.W.”— William R. Wittingham, fourth Anglican bishop of Baltimore (a Latinophile who used “Guillelmus” for “William”), dated Sept. 22, 1856; later in the diocesan library of Maryland; deaccessioned 2006.

•  VD16 B 727.   Contemporary limp vellum with evidence of ties; slightly yapp edges. Occasional light foxing. 19th-century library stamps on the front free endpaper and title-page. A clean solid copy.  (24432)

CanTeenage Girls Be Taught SELFLESSNESS?

•  “New edition,” from the Warne's Star series, of this improving novel aimed at young ladies. Advertisements at front and back list evocatively other items in the Star series, and in other Warne series as well. Click the interior image for an enlargement.

Binding:  Publisher's dark green cloth, front cover and spine stamped in black and gilt with the cover incorporating an elegant emblematic device featuring Apollo/Hyperion and his horses, and the spine an angel holding a small child; the number 18 can be seen in the right raking light, stamped in blind, within the bottom element of the front cover.

•  Binding cocked, corners and spine extremities a touch rubbed. Page edges age-spotted; pages faintly and evenly age-toned. In fact a bright, handsome copy.  (23190)

TRAVELS of the“Second Benjamin”

•  Interesting travelogue, in which a Jewish scholar in search of the Ten Lost Tribes follows in the footsteps of medieval adventurer Benjamin of Tudela. Benjamin recounts a number of stories, some firsthand and some anecdotal, of the oppression and persecution of the Jews in various nations.

This is the second English-language edition, following the original French edition of 1856 (“Cinq Années”) and the subsequent, expanded German edition of 1858. The oversized, folding map marking Benjamin’s route was engraved by Engel & Co.

•  19th-century quarter black morocco with marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title; back joint and paper edges slightly scuffed. Front pastedown with institutional rubber- stamp (no other markings). Pages very faintly age-toned, else clean.

“Remarks” — A Reply

•  First edition of one of the best-known responses to Anthony Collins's landmark Discourse of Free-Thinking. Bentley's Remarks was considered a crushing rebuttal of Collins's treatise, and of deism as interpreted in the Discourse; the DNB says “Bentley destroyed any pretensions of Collins to thorough scholarship, exposed many gross blunders, and claimed Collins's principle of free inquiry as his own and that of all the orthodox believers.” Click the interior image for an enlargement.

•  ESTC T53380.  On Bentley's response to Collins, see: Dictionary of National Biography.   Recent marbled paper–covered boards, front cover with gilt-stamped leather title-label. Title-page with author's name inked in an early hand, dedication with dedicatee's name (Francis Hare) inked in the same hand. Title-page with two spots of light staining; pages otherwise clean, with a very few early inked marginalia. (20745)

This ClassicistCrushes Collins?

•  First edition of the second portion of one of the best-known responses to Anthony Collins's landmark Discourse of Free-Thinking. Bentley here takes up where he left off in the first part of the Remarks (considered a crushing rebuttal of Collins's treatise, and of deism as interpreted in the Discourse), moving on to assess many of the citations and classical references from p. 90 onwards of Collins's work. Writers whose words Bentley feels Collins misrepresented include Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Plutarch, Cato, and Cicero. Click the interior image for an enlargement.

•  ESTC T53381. On Bentley's response to Collins, see: Dictionary of National Biography.   Recent marbled paper–covered boards, front cover with gilt-stamped leather title-label. Faint crease lines occasionally visible, pages otherwise clean. (20751)

Atheist Hymnal

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•  Undated, sole edition of a hymnal for atheists, freethinkers, skeptics, secular humanists, spiritualists, and liberals — an unusual item. Every movement needs its songs, so to fill the void the author here compiles 425 “Liberal Hymns” (some with printed music), as well as doxologies and recitations, to express and illustrate the non-theist worldview. In several chapters he provides suggestions and guidelines for such an approach to marriage and funeral services, invocations, sentiments and toasts, epitaphs, obituaries, wills, benedictions, and baby names. Includes an index (pp. 579–85).

De Robigne Mortimer Bennett (1818–82), originally a Shaker, later became an important proponent of Freethought in the United States, founding the periodical Truth Seeker on 1 September 1873 to promote the cause of reason. He was one of Anthony Comstock's targets and was convicted after a trial in the U.S. Circuit Court for violating the Comstock Act by selling (at a Freethinker's convention) a copy of an “obscene” book (Cupid's Yokes). He served 13 months in the Albany penitentiary after a petition to President Rutherford Hayes for his release came to naught.

Publisher's advertisements in the back.

•  Publisher's very dark puce cloth, gilt-stamped on the spine. Covers rubbed, with some staining and “bubbling” to cloth of front cover. Slight tear to cloth at top edge of back cover, and at head and foot of spine. Gilt on spine still mostly bright, with letters nearest front joint darkened. Mild internal foxing. A good sound copy.  (24483)

Written While Living in Rhode Island & Drawing Its Landscape

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•  First edition; a second was published the same year. Includes “An essay towards a new theory of vision. First published in the year MDCCIX,” with a separate title-page, in vol. II, on pp. [211]–358.

Presented here is Berkeley's defense of revealed religion: It ranks as a major example of English literature and of American literature too, for he wrote it while living in America waiting for money for his projected university in Bermuda. “Alciphron, a set of dialogues located notionally in England, but drawing much of the landscape description from Rhode Island,” sold well and aroused controversy after his return to Britain. The New Theory of Vision is “a work of lasting importance in the psychology of perception[; it] was transitional between Berkeley's already informed interests in mathematics and natural philosophy and a growing independence of mind in metaphysics and epistemology” (both quotations from DNB on-line).

Each volume's main title-page bears an emblematic engraved vignette with a Biblical and a classical motto beneath; the text is embellished with a few nicely engraved initials, headers, and tailpieces; and of course “Vision” offers its several diagrams.

Provenance: “A. Thorpe – York” inscribed on title-pages.

•  ESTC T86056; NCBEL, II, 1852. Not in European Americana.   Contemporary sheep, spines with raised bands and gilt-stamped red leather labels; covers framed and paneled in blind-stamped triple fillets with blind-stamped corner fleurons; all edges red. Leather rubbed with some loss to corners, edges, turn-ins; vol. I with pulls at both spine extremities, small gouge to front cover, front joint opening with cover almost off. Old institutional bookplates and rubber-stamp to pastedowns, title-pages, and lower edges of closed volumes; ink ownership signature to title-pages as above and a few additional ink and pencil marks; some very scattered spots or staining with pages generally clean. (21366)

First Printing in Europe of theBhagavadgita

•  First printing in the West of the Bhagavadgita, here in Sanskrit and Latin and with Latin notes by August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767–1845). The Gita is part of the epic poem Mahabharata and a summation of the Vedic, Yogic, Vedantic and Tantric philosophies—a major sacred text of Hindu thought, religion, and philosophy. Click either image
for an enlargement.

Provenance: From the collection of 19th-century scholar Dr. Johann August Neander (1789–1850), a convert from Judaism who became a leading scholar of Christianity.

Uncommon: Of U.S. institutional copies we trace fewer than 10.

•  19th-century German black mottled paper over boards. Binding shows wear. Ex-library with call number tag on spine; bookplate.

“Gems” — With Music

•  Christian songs and poems for children, including music.

•  Good in printed paper wrappers, sewing all but gone and signatures separated. (521)

Thoughtful SermonsElegantly Bound

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•  Uniformly bound set of mixed editions: The first volume is here in the stated 11th edition (following the first of 1777), the second in the seventh edition, the third in the fourth edition, and the fourth in the third edition.

The Rev. Blair's sermons would likely never have been printed without Dr. Johnson's famed intervention with reluctant publisher Strahan; once published, they enjoyed astonishing popularity, being translated into most major European languages and appearing in numerous editions of each successive volume.

Binding: Contemporary speckled calf, covers framed in gilt rolls, spines gilt extra with gilt-stamped red leather title and green leather volume labels.

•  ESTC N24287; Lowndes, I, 215.   Bound as above; edges and extremities rubbed, joints starting, vol. II with joints cracked (though holding). Front pastedown of vol. I with old catalogue description affixed and with small ticket of a Canadian bookseller, front free endpapers institutionally rubber-stamped, some rear pastedowns showing traces of adhered paper. Front fly-leaf of vol. I with upper outer portion torn away. Some portions showing spots of light foxing, most clean; vol. IV with scattered pencilled marginalia and marks of emphasis.An elegantly produced set of books, still pleasing. (20542)

Dissertation — Copenhagen, 1732

•  Diss. — Copenhagen (George Freidrich Bluhme, respondent), 1732. No edition of this work listed in NUC Pre-1956.

And Another, This One on DIVORCE Boehmer, Justus Henning, praeses. ...De ivre principis evangelici circa divortia.... Halae Magdeburgicae: Stanno Grunertiano, [1715]. Small 4to. [1] f., 70 pp.
$95.00

•  Inaug. diss. — Halle (Johann Friedrich Kayser, respondent), 1715.

•  Sometime bound in a nonce volume (removed).

For more 18TH-CENTURY GERMAN, LATIN LANGUAGE
LEGAL DISSERTATIONS — many on
religious subjects — click here.

History of the “Anti-Trinitarians”
or,UNITARIANS

•  History of Unitarianism by Friederich Samuel Bock (1716–85), professor of theology and university librarian at Königsberg. Unitarianism denied the doctrine of the Trinity as being irrational (hence it was also known as Anti-Trinitarianism), and it was also known as Socinianism after an early Unitarian, Faustus Socinus (1539–1604). This work appears to be an expanded version of Bock’s History of Socianism, first published in 1754. Tomus primus, here on offer in two volumes, gives biographies of noted Unitarians, A–Z; the first part was published in 1774 and the second in 1776. Tomus secundus was not to be published until 1784–85, so this set of books is complete as published, as a stand-alone, despite its primus designation.

•  19th-century yellow-green paper over cardboard with red paper spine labels lettered in black; abraded with some tears, especially to paper over spine. Interior clean, and all edges red.

All about the Mass — Best Edition & Beautiful Binding

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•  This Roberto Sala's edition of Bona's treatise on the Roman Catholic liturgy is considered the best edition of the work. It was first published in Rome, in 1671. The Catholic Encyclopedia describes it as “a veritable encyclopedia of historic information on all subjects bearing on the Mass, such as rites, churches, vestments, etc. Not least remarkable about these volumes, besides the wealth of material gathered together, are the classic purity, the manly vigour, and the charming simplicity of the Latin style.” This set consists of the first three volumes only. Vol. IV was issued in 1754 as Epistolae Selectae, and is not always present in library holdings of the work.

The typography is by the Royal Press and is handsome, employing roman and italic faces in a variety of point sizes. The text is presented in single and double-column format with finely engraved initials, and head- and tailpieces. The title-pages are printed in red and black with an engraved vignette.

Binding:  Contemporary treed sheep, covers framed in double gilt fillets, spines with gilt-stamped red leather label, gilt-ruled raised bands, and elaborately gilt-tooled floral decorations in compartments.   A most pleasing production!

•  Bound as above, covers with some cuts/abrasions, rubbing at corners and joints, surface cracks on spines; spines of vols. I and II with head and foot chipped. Front pastedowns with institutional bookplates; front free endpapers with early inked ownership inscriptions. Ex-library with old shelf labels to spines, and pressure-stamps (not rubber-stamps) including some on title-pages. All edges marbled, and marbled endpapers. Imposing.  (21444)

A Guide to Heaven

•  Relying on insights from the Church Fathers and some ancient philosophers, this popular spiritual work has been compared to the Imitation of Christ because of the simplicity of its style. First published in 1658, it saw 14 Latin editions in its first four decades; it was also translated into Armenian, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The author, Giovanni Cardinal Bona (1609–74), was a Cistercian monk and abbot noted as much for his scholarship as for preserving the great simplicity of his lifestyle even after he had attained high rank in the Church.

•  On Bona, see: New Catholic Encyclopedia, II, 655. Speckled paper over light boards, lightly soiled. Interior with some light soiling, especially on outer pages and upper edges, and a little faint waterstaining.

Catholic Orthodoxy Defended — An Edition in ENGLISH

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for enlargement.

•  Late 18th-century printing of an unattributed English translation of Bossuet’s assertion of orthodox Catholic belief, which the Catholic Encyclopedia (online) claims “worried the Protestant divines more than had any folio in fifty years” upon its first appearance. ESTC and OCLC find only four U.S. holdings of this edition.

•  ESTC T106709. Recent quarter calf over marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped leather title and author labels and with gilt-stamped decorative devices within compartments. Title-page and a few others stamped by a now-defunct institution; one page with offsetting to inner margin from a now-absent bookmark; volume otherwise clean and in fact a nice copy.

This Jesuit Got in aGreat Deal of Trouble

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•  Early Holland edition, following the first Paris printing of the same year, of a high-spirited philosophical exercise in Cartesian criticism that examined Descartes’ notion of the animal-machine, concluding that animals are in possession of intelligence and communication amongst themselves, by means of being inhabited by the souls of demons and fallen . The work caused such a scandal that Bougeant was exiled to La Fleche for his folly.

Following the piece is the text of a letter from Bougeant to Abbé Savalette of the Jesuit Council, in which Bougeant describes his regret at having brought about so much turmoil, renounces the positions taken in the Amusement, and notes that he would have chosen to suppress the work if it had been in his power to do so. The volume closes with a lengthy catalogue of books published by Pierre Humbert in Amsterdam from 1734 through 1740.

Provenance: Front pastedown with small bookplate of Augustine Legillon, dated 1809.

•  DeBacker-Sommervogel I, 1879. Contemporary speckled calf with expectable acid-pitting; remarkably skillfully rebacked with the original gilt extra spine restored, and bearing a gilt-stamped leather title label. Advertising leaves with a few inked annotations in an early hand. Overall a very nice copy.

Thai Life of Christ — Printed in Bangkok — A Notable Map

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•  Printed in Bangkok, text in Thai. Condensation and adaptation of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John by a renowned American physician and Protestant missionary, who from 1835 to 1873 lived in Siam where he introduced Western medicine, journalism, etc.

Affixed to the rear pastedown is a xylographically printed map of the Holy Land with sites in Thai characters. This is surely one of the earliest maps printed in Thailand, if not the first.

Rare: Via OCLC, RLIN, and NUC Pre-1956 we trace only two copies in U.S. libraries and this one of those two, now deaccessioned.

•  Publisher’s patterned cloth and orange paper sides; rubbed, soiled, and chipped with joints starting. Some bubbling of paper to front pastedown. Ex-library: front pastedown with library bookplates and a rubber-stamped five-digit number (repeated on another leaf), title-page and one other page pressure-stamped, and one margin inked with a four-digit number. Front free endpaper torn in gutter margin. One leaf chipped at fore-edge, with loss of several characters loss unlikely to affect the sense); pages otherwise free of chipping or tearing — clean.

“Large Scale” in Several Respects . . .
62 Engravings & Bedford Bound

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mouse-over, for an enlargement.

•  First edition, illustrated with a total of 62 engraved plates. Allibone describes Brayley “a laborious and accurate topographer”; he compiled and edited a wide range of works with titles featuring assorted Beauties, Picturesques, Histories, Antiquities, etc. The present work provides a history of Westminster Abbey and some of its associated luminaries, along with extensive descriptions of its architecture, sculptures, and paintings. The illustrator who portrayed many of the above, John Preston Neale, was an architectural draftsman and landscape painter “best remembered for his views of the nation's country houses, churches, and public buildings,” according to the Oxford DNB.

Binding:  By Francis Bedford, signed, in dark brown morocco done between 1851 and 1880, covers framed and panelled in ornate gilt rolls with gilt-stamped corner fleurons and midpoint decoration. Spines gilt extra with gilt-stamped leather title and volume labels. Board edges gilt-tooled with triple fillets, turn-ins with gilt-tooled rolls and corner fleurons. All edges gilt. Stamped “F. Bedford” on lower front turn-in.

Provenance:  Each front pastedown with armorial bookplate of William Arthur, sixth Duke of Portland.

•  NSTC 2B46491; Allibone 240; Brunet, II, 1215.   Binding as above, minor shelf wear to lower edges and corners, vol. I with front board expertly reattached and with small dent to outer edge of front cover. Joints delicate, due to size and weight of volumes, but holding. A few pages and plates with faint foxing, otherwise clean.  (24100)

The Waldensians — Histoire & Catéchisme

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•  Uncommon first edition of Brez's history of the Waldensian sect, ending with the group's persecution by the Duke of Savoy in 1655. This volume contains two parts in one, as issued, and closes with the “Catéchisme des Vaudois, tel qu'il a été publié par eux en l'année 1100,” translated into French by Brez.

RLIN and OCLC locate only eight U.S. institutional holdings.

•  Brunet, I, 1254.   19th-century quarter morocco with marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title and gilt-stamped decorations between raised bands; edges and joints rubbed, foot of spine with inked call number. Front pastedown with institutional bookplate and with bookseller's small ticket, title-page with institutional pressure-stamp, dedication page with inked numeral in lower margin; back pastedown with paper abrasions and adhesions. Upper edges lightly waterstained, pages with varying degrees of spotting. One leaf with lower outer corner torn away, touching two letters. (20856)

Nonconformist Debate

•  First edition of these conference proceedings, with the title-page proclaiming “People’s edition.” The Anti-State-Church Association was one of the most prominent Dissenting societies during the church debates of 1826–52, although unsuccessful in their disestablishment campaign. Click the images for enlargements.

•  NSTC 2LON952. Removed from a nonce volume. Title-page with inked numeral in upper outer corner. First two leaves with small nicks to outer edges; pages clean.

Woman Author / Woman Printer — London, 1775

•  Third edition of Brook’s explication of the principles underlying Quaker worship practices, issued by a woman printer—Mary Hinde, successful printer and publisher of numerous Quaker items.

•  ESTC T65811. Recent wrappers. Pages age-toned, with a few small spots.

For a page dedicated to the
FRIENDS/QUAKERS,  click here.

AmericanBaptist Opinions (Strong Ones)

•  The author (1795–1872) was a "minister of the gospel, and member of a church in the Baptist denomination." While discussing the many facets of communion taking, Brooks denounces Roman Catholics, Paedobaptists, and several other denominations.

•  Shoemaker 11993. Ex–defunct library, with stamp on title- and three other pages. Removed from a nonce volume; respined with archival paper. A uniformly browned copy.

Design, Beauty, Gout, Tobacco, “Chickens”

•  First edition of these poems, published posthumously by the author’s son; of two similar issues printed in the same year, this was the one meant for the general public, with the other intended for private circulation only. Browne was a notably witty and amiable conversationalist whose company (though not his public speechmaking) was prized by Dr. Johnson; he is best remembered today for his poems “A Pipe of Tobacco” (“Blest leaf! Whose aromatic gales dispense / To templars modesty, to parsons sense”) and “De Animi Immortalitate,” a meditation on the immortality of the soul — both of which are included here, the latter with Soame Jenyns’s English translation.

•  ESTC T116967. Recent marbled paper–covered boards, spine with printed paper label. Frontispiece lacking; title-page and a few others stamped by a now-defunct institution. Inner margins of the first two leaves and outer margin of the final leaf repaired.

The Author Was aStrange (Mental) Case

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•  First edition, with errata slip present. Browne was a dissenting minister who, according to Allibone, spent the last ten years of his life under the delusion that God had “annihilated in him the thinking substance, and utterly divested him of consciousness: that though he retained the human shape, and the faculty of speaking, in a manner that appeared to others rational, he had all the while no more notion of what he said than a parrot” — and yet while in that state, he compiled Greek and Latin dictionaries, answered Woolston's Discourse on the Miracles of Our Saviour, and wrote this rebuttal of Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation.

•  ESTC T86771; Allibone 263.   Period-style calf framed and panelled in blind rolls with blind-tooled corner fleurons, spine with gilt-stamped leather title and author labels, gilt-dotted raised bands, and gilt-stamped decorations in compartments (signed in blind on lower rear turn-in by Grace Bindings). Pagination jumps from 267 to 272, text complete. Title-page with early inked annotation on the authorship of Christianity as Old as the Creation, and with institutional rubber-stamp in lower margin; closed lower edges rubber-stamped. First and last few leaves lightly spotted.  (23782)

NOT the Progress — The Pharisee & Publican
     & the Dying Sayings

•  Uncommon early 18th-century edition of this important theological work, originally printed in 1685. All of Bunyan’s works, not just his Pilgrim’s Progress, were widely read and often reprinted in his day; this 1725 printing is described as the 12th edition, but ESTC locates only three editions (in 1704, 1705, and 1706) between the initial appearance and the present example. The 1704–25 editions are all scarce, surviving in only a few copies each. Click the images for enlargements.

John Marshall also issued this work in the same year as the present example with a slightly different title-page, reading “Wherein several great and weighty things . . . ,” this being a copy of the issue with a cancel title-page.The text is illustrated with one woodcut scene.  A few copies are described as having a frontispiece, which would not be integral to the collation; presumably it was added later and so not original.

Provenance: John Kinsman, jun., 1760; Edwin P. Farnham, 1903.

•  ESTC T58485.   Recent speckled paper wrappers. Free endpapers and first and last leaves with worm damage to edges; final blank leaf lacking. Front free endpaper and dedication page with rubber-stamped numerals (no other markings). Lower outer corners waterstained in first portion of volume; some darker stains from laid-in plant matter, with several leaves having words obscured or lost due to botanical adhesions — in the worst case, one leaf with hole affecting about 30 words from having adhered to plant matter, subsequent leaf with about 15 words obscured. Some headers just shaved but no catchwords touched. Title-page verso and back free endpaper with inked ownership inscriptions as above.  (20618)

“Water of Life”

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•  Although Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is his best-remembered work today, all of his works enjoyed a wide audience in their time. This treatise on the nature of divine grace went through numerous editions following its original publication in 1688, the year of the author's death; this example is the seventh edition, with all of the intervening 18th-century editions being fairly scarce in institutional holdings.The present edition is scarce as well: Only one U.S. institution reports ownership (two reported copies having been deaccessioned, and one apparent other being a duplicate report).

•  ESTC T58617.   Recent full calf, absolutely plain with no spine label. Title-page and back free endpaper institutionally rubber-stamped; last page and back free endpaper with a few early inked letters and the date 1899. Pages browned, with intermittent staining. (20675)

“Natural” Law in ourAMERICAN Background

•  Lucid examination of the philosophy of natural law. Written by a Swiss jurist, the work was first published in 1747 and first translated into English in the following year. The Encyclopædia Britannica says of Burlamaqui that "his fundamental principle may be described as rational utilitarianism" (IV, 836); his works are considered a primary source of the theory voiced in the Declaration of Independence.

The foot of the first recto in each gathering is marked "Vol. I"; Sweet & Maxwell cite a second volume not printed until 1784. All 14 chapters listed in the table of contents are present here, and Burlamaqui seems to come to a rather thundering conclusion at the end of the work, one that affirms the validity of the Christian religion and the honorable nature of the "happy agreement between natural and revealed light." Definitely, a satisfactory stand-alone.

•  Sweet & Maxwell 592. Recently trimly rebound in quarter calf over marbled paper sides, spine with gilt-ruled raised bands, small gilt-stamped floral devices in compartments, and gilt-stamped morocco title label. Pages gently age-toned, some with light spots of foxing. Pleasing copy of a significant text in the history of law.

One’s State in Life

Buys, Jan.

•  Jan Buys, better known by his Latin name, Joannes Busaeus (1547–1611), was one of three brothers all of whom joined the Jesuits and became professors. Jan taught theology at Mainz for more than 20 years and authored numerous works, the best known of which is Enchiridon piarum meditationum in omnes Dominicas, Sanctorum Festa . . . (A Handbook of Pious Meditations for all the Sundays and Saints’ Days). His De statibus hominum is a discussion, arranged in alphabetical order, of the different states of life, starting with abbots, moving on to adolescents and nobility, and ending with virgin, widows, and those vowed to holy things. Buys discusses the requirements, duties, and rights of each state, and how those in it may obtain holiness and fulfill their roles in Christian society. An appendix is also given, on the life of rustici or peasants. Quotations throughout, most from Scripture and the Fathers of the Church, are thoroughly referenced in the sidenotes.

This work was first published in 1613, and the title-page of the first edition exists in two states, of which this—with the author’s name after the title and “Apud” before the publisher’s name—is apparently the less common. The title is printed within an engraved architectural border depicting the theological and cardinal virtues, while the text is decorated with a few woodcut initials, woodcut and typographic headpieces, and a simple tailpiece at the end. A further edition was issued in Lyons in 1614.

•  DeBacker-Sommervogel, II, 439. Vellum over paste boards, covers sprung and moderately soiled; remnants of paper shelf label at base of spine. Bookplate and shelf label affixed to front pastedown; endpapers lightly soiled and pastedowns tearing along turn-ins. Text lightly age-toned with a very light old waterstain to lower and outer margins. Two shallow tears into the engraved border of the title-page, one with a little loss; a few leaves shallowly tattered on the top edge and a few with small holes in the margins. All edges red, faded.

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