Justin Croft : Antiquarian Books

(ARMENIAN). ~ Compendiose notizie sulla congregazione de' monaci Armeni Mechitaristi di Venezia nell'isola di S. Lazzaro. [Title also in Armenian].

[Island of San Lazzaro, Venice: Tipografia di Sudetta Isola, 1819.

First edition of a lovely example of the Armenian typography of the Mekhitarist monks of the island of San Lazzaro in the Venetian lagoon. The island was granted to a small group of Armenian monks led by Mekhitar escaping Turkish persecution in 1717. The monastery (which came to occupy the entire island) became a centre of scholarly renown in the fields of oriental study and philology, welcoming scholars from all over the world. Byron notably spent part of 1816 on the island studying Armenian. This scarce history is in both Armenian and Italian, and includes several notices of the earlier productions of the Mekhitarist press. view more...

£250.00

US$486.17*

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[BAKER, Thomas]. ~ Traité de l'incertitude des sciences. Traduit de l'anglois [translated by Nicolas Berger].

Paris: Pierre Miquelin and Jacques Piget, 1714.

First edition in French of Baker's Reflections upon Learning (1699), a work designed to display the inadequacies of human knowledge and reason and to emphasize the ultimate need for belief in revelation. It proved controversial (provoking an angry response from geologist and physician John Woodward) and was widely reprinted. Bacon and Descartes are closely considered. view more...

£250.00

US$486.17*

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BARTH, Christian Gottlob. ~ [Title in Hindi] Brief history of the Church of Christ... translated into Hindi by John Parsons, missionary, Monghir.

Calcutta: J. Thomas, Baptist Mission Press, 1849.

First edition in Hindi, probably translated from the English version of Barth's Christliche Kirchengeschichte, a fundamental text for the protestant mission in India. The work was also translated into Oriya and Singhalese. Barth was a major figure in the production of texts for the Lutheran missions outside Europe. John Parsons, the Hindi translator, lived for a long time at Monhir, dying there 1869. He is best remembered as a translator of the New Testament into Hindi. view more...

£250.00

US$486.17*

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BAYLEE, John T. ~ Statistics and facts in reference to the Lord's-day...

London: Seeleys and J.H. Jackson, 1852.

First edtion. Baylee was clerical secretary of the Society for promoting the due observance of the Lord's-day. view more...

£200.00

US$388.94*

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BECAN, Martin. ~ Compendium manualis controversiarum huius temporis de Fide ac Religione...

Douai: Baltazaris Belleri, 1637.

First published at Mainz in 1623 the Manualis Controversiarum provided an influential tool for Jesuits working against the teachings of Luther and Calvin. It is mainly concerned with the central questions of predestination, free will, the Eucharist and the infallibility of the Church, but also contains interesting considerations of lesser-known Reformation debates, such as the legality of duelling in the eyes of the Church. Becan was born at Hilvarenbeck, Brabant, Holland, 6 January, 1563 and died in Vienna, 24 January, 1624.Belleri was a prolific Douai printer and published a string of Jesuit and Catholic titles from the end of the sixteenth-century. Our copy of the Manualis bears a volume number on the spine suggesting it was from a run of similar-sized theological treatises. Nonetheless, it stands as a complete work in its own right, as published. view more...

£100.00

US$194.47*

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(BIBLE, in French.) ~ La Sainte Bible, qui contient le Vieux et le Nouveau Testament. Imprimée sur l'édition de Paris, de l'année 1805. Edition stéréotype, revue et corrigée avec soin d'après les textes Hebreu et Grec.

London: R. Watts "au frais de la Société pour l'impression de la Bible en langue Angloise et en langues étrangères," 1838-39.

One of numerous foreign-language editions published at this time by the British and Foreign Bible Society.This copy preserves the original British and Foreign Bible Society binding with elaborate panels stamped from a single plate. view more...

£95.00

US$184.75*

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(BOEHME, Jacob.) ~ A compendious view of the grounds of the Teutonick philosophy. With considerations by way of enquiry into the subject matter, and scope of the writings of Jacob Behmen, commonly called the Teutonick Philosopher. Also several extracts from his writings. And some words used by him explained. Published by a Gentleman retired from business.

London: by M. Lewis and sold by Bathurst, Baker, Whiston ,White, Richardson and Roberts, C. Dilly, Davis and Heard in London, Woodyer and Merril at Cambridge, Kendal at Colchester, Mills at Bath, Binns at Halifax, Binns, Ogle and Copperthwaite at Leeds, Megget and Stringer at Wakefield, Brook at Huthersfield, Mercer at Maidstone and Burden at Winchester, 1770.

First edition of this Behmenite collection, serving as an introduction to Boehme's theosophical system. It includes A treatise of eternal nature by the seventeenth-century English disciple John Pordage. It is a scarce edition, with an interesting provincial circulation, but is an example of one of many late eighteenth-century popular works on Boehme, reflecting a heightened interest (especially in artisan and radical context) in his visionary teachings. It is significant that many of Boehme's formulations prefigure the transcendent writings of William Blake, who was steeped in the Behmenist tradition. view more...

£450.00

US$875.11*

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BUCHANAN, George. ~ Paraphrasis Psalmorum Davidis poetica multo quam antehac castigatior; auctore Georgio Buchanano, Scoto, po'tarum nostri saeculi facilè principe. Adnotata sunt argumenta, & carminum genera. Accesserunt duae eiusdem Buchanani tragoediae sacrae: Jephthes, & Baptistes sive Calumnia.

London: Richard Field, 1592.

A rare London pocket edition of Buchanan's Latin verse paraphrases of the Psalms: "The work which more than any other has secured to [Buchanan] his eminent place among modern Latin poets. Buchanan's translation of the Psalms may fairly be considered one of the representative books of the sixteenth century, expressing, as it does, in consummate form, the conjunction of piety and learning which was the ideal of the best type of humanist" (Cambridge History of English and American Literature).Buchanan, though a Scotsman, travelled widely on the continent. The two plays, Jephthe and Baptistes, which also appear in our edition were composed at Bordeaux during a spell of teaching at the newly founded Collège de Guyenne (where Montaigne was among Buchanan's pupils). The Paraphrasis was begun at Coimbra (Portugal) where Buchanan had been teaching at the time of the Inquisition. He had gone to teach there in 1547, only to find the university soon overrun with Jesuits who observed his every movement and confined him to a nearby monastery to reform his humanist tendency towards satire (and the eating of meat in Lent). The Paraphrasis was the product of his penance: an unmistakeable triumph of humanist piety and scholarship. The work was dedicated to Mary Queen of Scots (and the dedication is repeated in our Elizabethan edition) who appointed Buchanan tutor to her son, the future James VI. It was first printed by the Estiennes in 1566, but was also printed in England in 1580 and 1583. view more...

£875.00

US$1701.61*

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CARRANZA, Bartolomé. ~ Summa Co[n]ciliorum et pontificum a Petro usaque ad Julium tertium succincte coplectens omnia quae alibi sparsim tradita sunt...

Paris: Charlotte Guillard, widow of Claude Chevallon, 1555.

A rare imprint bearing the name of Charlotte Guillard, the foremost woman-printer of the French Renaissance (see B. Beech, Renaissance Quarterly, XXXVI [1983], 345-367). "Charlotte Guillard, spent, by her account, fifty years as a printer. After sixteen years married to the printer Berthold Rembolt, she managed his business from 1518 until 1520 when she remarried Claude Chevallon... With her second husband, she published other works that contained recognition of both his and her contribution... When Chevallon died in 1537, Guillard took over the business, managing it for twenty years until her death in 1557... she published... under her own name 'At the House of Charlotte Guillard'. Several works she published contained praise of her expertise and the accuracy of her publications" (Susan Broomhall, Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France, p.55). The present imprint appears to have been a collaboration with a consortium of male colleagues in the Paris trade, since there exist copies of this work with the same collation and date but with (individually) the names of Jean Ruell, L'Angelier, Thibout and Turrisan. All are rare, recorded in just a handful of copies between them in the usual library catalogues. The CCFr lists a single copy of the Guillard issue. This work is not found in the list of publications of Charlotte Guillard in A. Erdmann's My Gracious Silence; Women in the mirror of 16th century printing in Western Europe, pp. 246.Carranza, a Spanish Domincan theologian had briefly been Confessor to Mary I of England, later becoming Charles V's envoy to the Council of Trent (1546). His history of the earlier church councils had, significantly, been first printed in 1546 (Venice). It became very influential to judge by the number of reprints into the seventeenth century. view more...

£1300.00

US$2528.10*

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CHALMERS, Thomas. ~ Sermons preached in the Tron church, Glasgow.

Glasgow: for John Smith and Son, William White and Co in Edinburgh and Longman et al in London, 1819.

First edition, very scarce, of a work reprinted twice in the following decade. Chalmers was a pioneer social reformer whose work was carried out in the context of his poor parish in the rapdly industrializing city of Glasgow. "Chalmers became convinced that the fundamental problem in Glasgow and other Scottish cities was the breakdown of communal spirit. The middle and upper social orders had lost their sense of personal responsibility for the poor and unchurched. Moreover, many of the poor had become degraded to the status of 'paupers', dependent on institutional poor relief and suffering a loss of self-respect. His reading of Malthus convinced him that the major cause of poverty was the growth of population beyond the capacity of the country's agricultural resources to sustain it in decent comfort" (Oxford DNB). view more...

£350.00

US$680.64*

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(CHURCH OF ENGLAND). SEABURY, Samuel, the Reverend. ~ The continuity of the Church of England in the sixteenth century: two discourses: with an appendix and notes...

New York: Pudney & Russell, 1853.

First edition of a work "designed to explain and defend the position of the Church of England, so far as it involves that of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States" (Preface). Seabury was of a dynasty of American protestant churchmen: his grandfather (also Samuel) had been the first American Episcopal bishop. view more...

£120.00

US$233.36*

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[CHURCH OF ENGLAND]. PETLEY, Elias, translator. ~ [Book of Common Prayer, in Greek.] [Title in Greek characters.]

London: Thomas Cotes for Richard Whitaker, 1638.

First edition in Greek. Though some earlier portions of the prayer-book had appeared in the Greek/Latin diglot editions (first 1569) it was Elias Petley who brought the complete book into translation. It was done ostensibly for schoolboys although Griffiths suggests "A secondary purpose was perhaps the prospect of some kind of union between the Church of England and the Orthodox." This intriguing proposition is supported by the fact that the heresiologist Ephraim Pagitt, author of Christianographie (1635), commended Petley's Book of Common Prayer to the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, and the Maronites in his mission to establish the Church of England as an international force against Catholicism (Oxford DNB, entry for Paget). The work was dedicated to Archbishop William Laud and Petley's manuscript is preserved in the British Library.ESTC suggests that the cancelled leaf [alpha] 1 may have been a sub-title, but all copies for which we have found collations are without this leaf. Griffiths's collation also gives "minus a [alpha] 1." The only copy sold auction in the past 30 years (ABPC, the Evelyn copy) was also without it. view more...

£1250.00

US$2430.87*

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D[AVIES], J[ohn]. ~ The ancient rites, and monuments of the monastical, & cathedral church of Durham. Collected out of ancient manuscripts, about the time of the suppression. Published by J.D. of Kidwelly.

London: for W. Hensman, 1672.

First edition, prepared by John Davies of Kidwelly, putatively from a Latin manuscript dating from the "Suppression". It is a detailed antiquarian survey of the church and particularly of the shrine of St Cuthbert, which is described in quite sumptuous detail. It includes (not from the original manuscript, if it existed) an explanation of the tradition forbidding women from entering into the presence of the relics of St Cuthbert. The saint had once lived as a hermit at Corwen and was falsely accused of deflowering the local King's daughter. When challenged by King and daughter, Cuthbert prayed to God, to the effect that the ground opened with a hissing sound, promptly conveying the lying princess to Hell. Through Cuthbert's generous intercession the Princess was returned to life, on the condition that no woman should ever resort to him again. view more...

£300.00

US$583.41*

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(DICTIONARY, French-Latin). ~ Petit thresor des mots françois, selon l'ordre des lettres, ainsi qui'il les fuat escrire tournez en Latin. Revue et augmenté de plusieurs proverbes, dictions, & manieres de parler, Françoises & Latines...

Rouen: pour la Societé, 1666.

A French-Latin dictionary for Jesuit use. The earliest edition we have found being 1626 (Paris). The additions to this edition contain newer words and usages, together with place names. view more...

£200.00

US$388.94*

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DODWELL, Henry. ~ A discourse concerning the use of Incense in divine offices. Wherein its is proved, that the practice, taken up in the middle ages, both by the Eastern and Western churches, is, notwithstanding, an innovation from the doctrine of the first and purest churches, and the traditions derived from the apostles. Serving also to evince, that even the consent of those churches of the middle ages, is no certain argument, that even the particulars, wherein they are supposed to consent, were faithfully derived from the apostles, against the modern assertors of the infallibility of oral tradition. In a letter to a friend...

London: by J. Hepinstall, for James Holland, 1711.

First edition, printed in the year of the author's death (from a cold caught while walking from his home at Shottesbrooke, near Maidenhead, to London.) Dodwell was a scholar of remarkable industry and versatility, though not universally admired by his contemporaries. Gibbon, for example, criticised his method and style as "the one perplexed beyond imagination, the other negligent to a degree of barbarism" (DNB). In retrospect, however, Dodwell's method appears remarkably apposite: witness the philological and palaeographical discussion of the relative antiquity of various manuscripts and books in A discourse concerning the use of Incense. Certainly his critical skills outlived him in the person of Thomas Hearne who was partly brought up by Dodwell at Shottesbrooke.On the issue of incense, Dodwell was perhaps ahead of his time. While always a point of discussion within the church, the matter did not become critical until later in the nineteenth-century when the use of incense in the Church of England was outlawed by Archbishop Temple. view more...

£400.00

US$777.88*

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[EACHARD, John.] ~ The grounds and occasions of the contempt of the clergy and religion enquired into. In a letter written to R.L.

London: by W. Godbid for N. Brooke, 1670.

First edition. "This work, which brims over with wit and humour, had a rapid sale, and passed through many editions. The author represents the contempt with which the clergy were generally regarded as being in great measure due to a wrong method of education or the poverty of some of the inferior clergy" (DNB). The book, with its occasionally hilarious anecdotes of disasters in the pulpit, was widely discussed and criticised. It later formed the basis of Macaulay's account of the English clergy around the time of the accession of James II in his History of England. Eachard was Master of Catherine Hall, Cambridge and later Vice-Chancellor of the University. He was something of a learned wag and here forestalled the likely assumptions of the reader in a good-humoured preface: "I can very easily phansie, that many upon the very first sight of the Title, will presently imagin, that the Author does either want the great Tithes, lying under the pressure of some pitiful Vicaridge; or that he is much out of humour, and dissatisfied with the present condition of Affairs; or lastly, that he writes to no purpose at all, there having been an abundance of unprofitable Advisers in this kind." view more...

£300.00

US$583.41*

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EVANS, Alfred Bowen. ~ The flowers of autumn, and autumn leaves: two homilies for the fall of the year.

Enfield and London: John Henry Meyers for Edward Lumley, 1856.

First edition of two charmingly suburban Victorian sermons. "Autumn is closing about us once again... the Chestnut-tree hath taken to itself a garment of dappled scarlett and yellow; and the Privet hath decked itself with a scarf of ochre..." The arboreal metaphors are extended (and stretched?) in the second sermon which considers the relative ages of ancient trees. Evans, who was rector of St. Andrews, Enfield and St. Andrews, Marylebone, was a prolific sermonizer even by contemporary standards and many of his texts were printed. view more...

£40.00

US$77.79*

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GODWIN, Francis, Bishop. ~ De praesulibus Angliae commentarius:omnium episcoporm, necnon et cardinaleium eiusdem gentis, nomina, tempora, seriem, atque actiones maximè memorabiles ab ultima antiquitate repetita complexus...

London: [by William and Stansby and Elliot's Court Press,] "ex officina Nortoniana, apud Joannem Billum," 1616.

First Latin edition, expanded from Godwin's Catalogue of the bishops of England, since the first planting of Christian religion in this island, together with a briefe history of their lives and memorable actions, so neere as can be gathered out of antiquity (George Bishop, 1601). Godwin, Bishop of Landaff, was one of that group of scholars educated in the 1580s and 90s who developed a taste for history and antiquarianism and who helped to rewrite the history of the British Isles. His friends included both William Camden and Sir Robert Cotton.The Catalogue of Bishops was intended as a complete biographical register, though some of the lives run to only a few lines. It can be interpreted as one of several attempts to formalise the history of the Church of England in the face of Catholic and Puritan criticism. The Latin edition was significant as a vehicle for making this important British work available to the international audience. It incorporates the enlargements made to the Catalogue in the edition of 1615, including Godwin's discourse on the first conversion of the Britain to christianity. view more...

£650.00

US$1264.05*

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[HOTMAN, François.] ~ La vie de Messire Gaspar de Colligny Seigneur de Chastillon, Admiral de France. A laquelle sont adiousté se Memoires sur ce qui se passa au Siege de S. Quentin.

Leyden: Bonaventure & Abraham Elzevir, 1643.

First Elzevir edition of this biography of the French protestant hero Gaspard de Coligny. Coligny had been appointed Admiral of France in 1552 and was captured at the siege of St Quentin in 1557. In the two years of his captivity he became a convinced Calvinist and went on to lead the French Huguenots in the religious wars against Catholic dominance in France. He was implicated in the murder of Francis, Duke of Guise in February 1563, an event which was to lead ultimately to the Massacre of St Bartholomew in 1572, in which Coligny himself was killed under the direct supervision of the Duke's son, Henry.Coligny's life became an inspiration to Protestants throughout Europe. It was first printed in Latin in 1575 and had previously appeared in French earlier the same year, in a quarto edtion. view more...

£500.00

US$972.35*

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(JESUITS). OLIVER, George, the Reverend. ~ Collections towards illustrating the biography of the Scotch, English, and Irish members of the Society of Jesus.

London: Charles Dolman, 1845.

First edition, one of 250 copies of this valuable biographical dictionary. view more...

£150.00

US$291.70*

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[JOHNSON, Samuel, "the Whig."] ~ Julien l'apostat ou abrege de sa vie. Dans lequel, on voit l'horreur que les meilleurs Chrétiens d'entre ses sujets témoignoient publiquement contre lui, en Paroles, en Actions & méme dans leurs Devotions publiques; avec une Comparison du Papisme & du Paganisme; et une autre idee Generale du Papisme, avec un Petit traité de l'Antechrist. Traduit de l'anglois.

[n.p.], 1688.

First edition in French of Johnson's polemic against the succession of the Duke of York (later James II). Published in English in 1682 "It was an overnight sensation... The tract drew an elaborate parallel between the fourth-century apostate emperor, Julian, and the Catholic successor to the crown, James, duke of York. The moral of the story was that, as the primitive Christians of the fourth century had openly resisted their pagan emperor, so the English might oppose a popish prince. The tract justified both the efforts of whigs to exclude the duke of York from the throne as well as active resistance to him. Julian Johnson, as Johnson soon became known, was praised and celebrated by fellow whigs" (Zook in Oxford DNB). The work was supressed and the remaining copies burnt. Johnson was imprisoned for seditious libel.The French edition, presumably aimed at a continental Protestant audience was issued in the year of James's effective abdication and escape to France. In certain French eyes, the thrust of its argument seems to have become quickly diverted towards their own monarch, since in 1696 it was issued under a false Cologne imprint under a new title La peste du genre humain, ou la vie de Julien l'Apostat. Mise en paralelle avec celle de Louis XIV. view more...

£480.00

US$933.45*

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(JUDAISM and CATHOLICISM). ~ Tentatives pour l'instruction et la conversion des Juifs, recommandées à l'attention sérieuse des Chrétiens.

[Montpelier: widow Picot née Fontenay, n.d. [c. 1800].

First and only edition of a rare pamphlet advocating the conversion to Catholicism of the Jews in France. view more...

£150.00

US$291.70*

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LEE, Robert. ~ The reform of the Church of Scotland in worship, government, & doctrine. Part I.-Worship. Pp. x, [2], 182, [2] (advert).

Edinburgh: Edmonstone and Douglas, 1866.

A collection of nineteenth century Scottish ecclesiastical pamphlets, principally by Robert Lee, the reforming Church of Scotland minister. Lee's contribution was primarily in the reform of worship rather than theological debate, believing that worship should comprise three elements: word, prayer and praise. His controversial stance on a variety of topics led him to frequent clashes with conservative clergy and in 1859 he was unsuccessfully charged with unlawful innovations in worship. view more...

£50.00

US$97.23*

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LEWIS, C.S. ~ Rehabilitations and other essays.

London: Oxford University Press, 1939.

First edition. A collection of essays whose title characterized much of Lewis's work, as he attempted to bring the fading critical reputation of authors he revered back into balance. A nice copy, uncommon in this condition. view more...

£400.00

US$777.88*

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(LONDON). LEIGH, Samuel, publisher. ~ Leigh's new picture of London, or, A view of the political, religious, medical,literary, municipal, commercial and moral state of the British metropolis presenting a luminous guide to the stranger on all subjects connected with general information, business, or amusement to with are subjoined a description of the environs, and a plan for viewing London in eight days.

London: for Leigh and Son, and Baldwin and Craddock, 1834.

£150.00

US$291.70*

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(LONDON). TIMBS, John. ~ Curiosities of London exhibiting the most rare and remarkable objects of interest in the metropolis with nearly sixty years' personal recollections... a new edition, corrected and enlarged.

London: Virtue & Co., 1876.

First published in 1855 Timbs's Curiosities is a wonderful catalogye of London facts and eccentricities: alchemists, coffee houses, Chelsea buns, fogs, law courts, railway termini, prisons - they're all here. view more...

£75.00

US$145.85*

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M'CULLA, V.[igors], ~ The Bank Note, or, engraver carv'd; in answer to Onesimus, the ecclesiastical state tinker...

London: [R. Wilks] for the author, "And sold at Nethaneel Chapel, on Tuesday and Thursday Evenings; at the Rev. J. Carter's Meeting, Portsea; by I. Miller, Bookseller, 72, Chancery Lane; Mr. Biddle, No. 11, Cleveland Street, Fitzroy Square; T. Ball, Whittlesea, Isle of Ely; and J. Fitzjohn, King's Cliff, Northamptonshire", 1806.

First and only edition of this virulent sectarian attack on the antinomian artist/engraver Garnet Terry ('Onesimus') by a dissenting 'Minister of the Gospel at Nethaneel chapel, Eden Street, Tottenham Court Road'. The 'minister of darkness', Terry, and his 'religious and political principles', promulgated from 'his haunt in Clare Court, Drury Lane' are roundly dismissed in seven letters. M'Culla refers repeatedly to a book by Onesimus put into his hands by a bookseller, which we have been unable to identify from library catalogues: Terry's earlier publications appear to have been on the subject of engraving or were simply short pamphlets. The work referred to by M'Culla ran to over 200 pages, if we can trust his references.The imprint and final advert provide a useful insight into the dissemination of non-conformist writings. view more...

£120.00

US$233.36*

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