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An attractive polyglot New Testament. The French text is the Geneva version, the English text is the Authorized version, and the Dutch text is the States-General version. British and Foreign Bible Society Library. Historical catalogue of printed editions of the Bible, 1450 (Polyglot), 626 (English), 3329 (Dutch), 3768 (French).

First edition in French of Baker’s popular Reflections upon Learning (1699), a work designed to display the inadequacies of human knowledge and reason and to emphasise the ultimate need for belief in revelation. It proved controversial (provoking an angry response from geologist and physician John Woodward) and was widely reprinted in England. Bacon and Descartes, the twin pillars of scientific civilisation, raised on either side of the English Channel, are closely considered, though the spirit of scientific enquiry is frequently disparaged. The work of a conservative Anglican antiquary, its reception in France is perhaps surprising. The French translation was reprinted at Amsterdam the following year. Rochedieu, p. 15.

A confessor’s manual arranged according to the Scotist system favoured by the Franciscans: a system named after the thirteenth-century Oxford theologian John Duns Scotus. It was first printed in 1713; all editions are rare. Palau 18233. Though widely printed and used OCLC records very few copies of any edition outside Spain. In the US we can locate a copy of the 1757 edition (University of New Mexico) and of the 1724 edition (Saint Bonaventure University NY) only.

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.

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. COPAC lists only the British Library copy; not found in OCLC.

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.’ Wing E50.

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. Willems 564 ‘ce petit volume, parfaitement exécuté, est un des plus recherché de la collection elzevirienne.’