The Preacher: A Discourse, Shewing, What are the Particular Offices and Employments of those of that Character in the Church.

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Creator

John Edwards.

Title

The Preacher: A Discourse, Shewing, What are the Particular Offices and Employments of those of that Character in the Church.

Publisher

London: Printed for J. Robinson, J. Lawrence, and J. Wyat,

Date

1705.

Description

Second edition.

Provenance: Gift from Sir John Davie, Harvard Class of 1681, to the Collegiate School (later renamed Yale College).

This volume, among the first several hundred given to Yale, was donated between 1714 and 1717 and contains manuscript shelfmarks indicated in both the 1743 and 1791 Yale library catalogues. New England theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) read and was substantially influenced by The Preacher as a young Yale tutor in the 1720s. Edwards maintained a catalogue of books he read at Yale, and as the only recorded volume of this three-volume work in the college library at the time, this is likely the copy he read (it also bears contemporary student marginalia). The entire three-volume work was given to Yale soon thereafter, and this odd volume was discarded in the 1870s. Books listed in Yale’s 1743 catalogue that remained on the shelves were reassembled when Sterling Memorial Library opened in 1931, and facsimiles of the catalogue were printed as keepsakes for the library’s opening. As a Yale alumnus, a student of book history, and someone interested both personally and professionally in the growth of Yale’s libraries, I find it exciting to own a volume that testifies so eloquently to their colonial origins.

Source

Basie Bales Gitlin