8vo. xvi, 328pp. With an engraved frontispiece. Without initial blank leaf. Contemporary panelled calf, recently expertly rebacked to style. Boards rubbed. Endpapers browned and spotted, early inked shelf-mark to FEP, very occasional chipping/loss to margins, overall internally clean and crisp.

The second edition (printed the year after the first) of Church of England clergyman and poet Luke Milbourne's (1649-1720) English verse translation of De Imitatione Christi, the ecclesiastical treatise commonly attributed to Thomas a Kempis (c.1380-1471). Composed in 1418, and circulating in manuscript form, initially anonymously (The editio princeps is a Catalan translation printed at Barcelona in 1482), De Imitatione Christi is an ascetic manual of devotion rooted within the German-Dutch mystical school, and is undoubtedly the scholar's most highly regarded work, widely cited as influential to many Christian conversions, including those of the founder of Methodism John Wesley (who produced a translation of his own) and the abolitionist author of 'Amazing Grace' John Newton.