631C Dod, John. (1549-1645);
and Robert Cleaver. (1561- ca. 1625)
Five separate works bound together in one volume.
I: A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Ninth and Tenth Chapters of the Prouerbs of Salomon.
II: A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Eleuenth and Twelfth Chapters of the Prouerbs of Salomon.
III: A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Chapter of the Prouerbs of Salomon.
IV: A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seuenteenth Chapters of the Prouerbs of Salomon.
V: A Plaine and Familiar Exposition: of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Chapters of the Prouerbs of Salomon.
By Iohn Dod and Robert Cleaver.

I: London: Imprinted by Felix Kyngston, for Thomas Man, 1612
II: London: Printed by William Hall, for Thomas Man, 1612
III: London: Imprinted by T.C. for Roger Iackson: and are to bee sold at his shop in Fleet-street, neere the Conduit, 1615
IV: London: Printed by Felix Kingston for Thomas Man, 1611
V: London: Printed for Roger Iackson, and are to be sold at his Shop in Fleetstreete neere the Conduit, 1611

$3,000

Quarto, 7.125 x 5.25 in. I: Fourth edition; II: Fourth edition; III: Third edition; IV: Second edition; V: Second edition. I: A-R4 (A1 original blank present); II: A-Z4, Aa-Bb4 (A1, blank but for the signature mark, is present); III: A-V4 (V4 original blank present); IV: A-X4 (X4 original blank present); V: ¶4 (¶1 original blank present), A2, B-Y4, Z2 (Z2 original blank present). This copy is in lovely condition internally, with all of its original blanks present throughout. However, the third section, on the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of the Proverbs, is trimmed affecting the printed marginal notes. The well-executed binding is modern quarter calfskin and corners, with marbled paper boards.

“In an age in which God and Satan, heaven and hell, were radiant or lurid realities, there was a sincere and insatiable demand for devotional and hortatory works, and English Protestantism had to create a new religious literature or recreate the old. The endless repetition and application of the central truths of faith and practice corresponded to the endless re-expression of the commonplaces of ancient ethics, and in some authors the two roads ran together. The appetite for counsels of piety and warnings against sin grew with the middle-class and Puritan public, but churchwomen in castle and hall likewise meditated over such handbooks in the intervals between good works, finding them a support against the pangs of widowhood or of matrimony. […] Next to the Bible the bestsellers of our period were such books as […] John Dod’s Plain and Familiar Expositions. […] While the sermon had the unique character of a divine message, and carried the obligation of close scrutiny of the inspired text, it was also a highly developed literary form, the product of an unbroken oratorical tradition which went back to the ancients. Its own special traditions of rhetoric and logic—the open and the closed hand, according to a common phrase—had been revivified by the powerful influence of Ramus and codified in such books as Keckermann’s Rhetoricae Ecclesiasticae. It was natural that the preaching of men of all religious categories—except ranters—should have a generic likeness, but there were tribal and individual differences. Many great Puritan preachers from Perkins to Baxter, such men as […] ‘Decalogue Dod’ were disposed, from choice, not ignorance, to favor the presentation of truth in her naked purity, not bedizened with human and profane learning.” (Bush)

I: STC 6956; II: STC 6959; III: STC 6961; IV: STC 6964; V: STC 6966.