Books and Manuscripts

(Mather, Cotton)
Ratio Disciplinae Fratrum Nov-Anglorum. A Faithful Account of the Discipline Professed and Practised; in the Churches of New-England...
Boston: Printed for S. Gerrish, 1726. First edition. Small 8vo. (ii), iv, 10, 207, (3) pp. Full contemporary paneled calf, rebacked, repair on front board, boards scratched and worn; all edges trimmed; early ownership signature of W. Cogswell on front paste-down; upper corner of title-page repaired with some text supplied in manuscript, repaired tear to same; shallow loss in bottom fore-edge, pp. 5/6, with no loss to text; repaired closed tear in pp. 45/46; lower margin of pp. 207/208 excised, but not affecting text; lacking front and rear free endpapers; scattered light foxing to text. Church 903; Evans 2775; Holmes 318; Sabin 46474; Streeter 672

First edition of Cotton Mather's discourse on church principles--a key work of New England church history. 

One of Cotton Mather's most important works and an "important exposition of the tenets of Congregationalism that carefully reaffirms the principles of the Cambridge Platform" (Streeter). Holmes reveals that although published in 1726, the work was actually written in 1701, quoting from Mather's Diary from October 3 of that year: "About this Time I finished a Work, which cost me much Time, and Care and Study. I wrote in a Book of above an hundred pages in Quarto, an account of the Principles and Practices of the Churches of New England. But I embellished it all along, with a further Account of what was done in the primitive Churches, which required some exquisite labor. I concluded, that a Book of this Importance, would have a mighty Tendency, to preserve the holy Discipline in our own Churches, from the Dangers of the Apostasy which may threaten it, and promote the Designs of Reformation abroad in the world."