A substantial and coherent sammelband of late 17th-century English religious controversy, contemporaneously bound, preserving a sequence of exchanges between leading Catholic and Anglican divines at the height of the tensions under King James II in the years immediately preceding the Glorious Revolution.
[Sammelband of English Protestant-Catholic Controversy], 1685-1688.
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A remarkable and evidently contemporaneously assembled sammelband comprising many works of theological controversy printed between 1685 and 1688, during the brief and deeply contested reign of King James II. These volumes preserve, in close succession, a series of polemical exchanges between leading Catholic and Anglican divines, reflecting one of the most intense periods of confessional dispute in post-Reformation England, immediately preceding the Glorious Revolution.
The collection centres upon the writings of John Gother, whose A Papist Misrepresented and Represented (1685) provoked a series of responses from prominent Anglican theologians, notably Edward Stillingfleet and William Sherlock, as well as Abednego Seller. The present sammelband brings together not merely isolated tracts, but a sustained and evolving controversy, preserving both the initial arguments and their subsequent refutations, defences, and counter-defences.
Among the works included are:
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A Papist Misrepresented and Represented (1685)
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The Doctrines and Practices of the Church of Rome (1686), complete with the Reflections
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A Papist Not Misrepresented by Protestants (1686)
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Remarks upon the Reflections of the Author of Popery Misrepresented (1686)
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Papists Protesting against Protestant Popery (1686)
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An Amicable Accommodation of the Difference between the Representer and the Answerer (1686)
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The Notes of the Church as laid down by Cardinal Bellarmine (1688)
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A Defence of the Confuter of Bellarmine’s Second Note of the Church (1687)
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The Use and Great Moment of the Notes of the Church (1687)
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A Vindication of the Brief Discourses concerning the Notes of the Church (1687)
Taken together, these works form the live theological dispute as it unfolded in print, illustrating in detail the competing claims of Catholic and Anglican ecclesiology, particularly concerning the “notes of the Church,” apostolic authority, and the nature of doctrinal continuity. The presence of multiple responses and rejoinders allows the reader to trace the controversy dynamically, rather than as isolated statements, offering very interesting insight into the intellectual and rhetorical strategies employed on both sides.
Such contemporaneously bound collections of polemical material are uncommon, and when they preserve a coherent sequence of related texts of this kind, they assume a significance beyond that of their individual components. The present example constitutes a primary source dossier of late Stuart religious controversy, situated at a pivotal historical moment immediately preceding the constitutional and confessional realignments of 1688.
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Size: 165 x 210 mm (approx., each)
Condition:
Contemporary full calf, spines attractively tooled in gilt with a design very much in the manner of the restoration period. Tooled morocco labels retained to both bindings, discoloured to the first volume. The second volume's label reads 'vol 16', though this sammelband almost certainly never extended to that many volumes. Bindings secure with both boards securely attached, both volumes show nicely, rubbed, a little dry, shelf and edge wear, repeating gilt tooling along board edges. Minor loss to leather at extremities of backstrips. Boards lined in double-fillet blind. Generally very clean throughout the text blocks, mildly toned, a little loss to lower corner of the last few leaves in the first volume, not affecting any text.
A genuinely historical artefact of reception and use; a magnificent set, a contemporaneously assembled record of a live confessional controversy.
