AN ENGLISH THEORY OF SECULAR GOVERNANCE
The true difference betweene christian subjection and unchristian rebellion; wherein the princes lawfull power to commaund for trueth, and indeprivable right to beare the sword are defended against the Popes censures and the Jesuites sophismes uttered in their Apologie and defence of english catholikes...
At Oxford.
Printed by Joseph Barnes Printer to the Universitie, 1585.
First edition.
8vo.
[24], 820pp, [10]. Recently neatly recased, with seventeenth-century calf boards-covering and spine laid down. Slightly rubbed with some darkening to spine. A little marginal creasing at front and end, old worm-track to blank fly-leaves and margin of title, not touching text.
The first edition of the first significant work by Thomas Bilson (1546/7–1616), sometime Warden of Winchester College, later Bishop of Winchester, in which he finds theological justification for a vernacular English theory of hereditary, monarchical and secular government.
His skills as both divine and Church-administrator are both prominently displayed in this magisterial - and voluminous - justification of the Elizabethan episcopal and political status quo. Ruling out the extremes of religious justification for rebellion against the Prince, Bilson also vehemently opposed presbyterian democracy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was present at the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 (and involved in the coordination of the writing of the Authorized Version of the Bible), and twice - after the deaths of both Whitgift and Bancroft - a candidate for promotion to Canterbury.
Subsequent to this first edition, a London edition followed from the press of John Jackson and Edmund Bollifant the following year, and certain sections were also reprinted - to justify monarchical supremacy - in the 1640s during the early period of the English Civil War.
His skills as both divine and Church-administrator are both prominently displayed in this magisterial - and voluminous - justification of the Elizabethan episcopal and political status quo. Ruling out the extremes of religious justification for rebellion against the Prince, Bilson also vehemently opposed presbyterian democracy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was present at the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 (and involved in the coordination of the writing of the Authorized Version of the Bible), and twice - after the deaths of both Whitgift and Bancroft - a candidate for promotion to Canterbury.
Subsequent to this first edition, a London edition followed from the press of John Jackson and Edmund Bollifant the following year, and certain sections were also reprinted - to justify monarchical supremacy - in the 1640s during the early period of the English Civil War.
ESTC S102066. STC 3071.
£ 2,000.00
Antiquates Ref: 28247