RARE CONDEMNED WORK ON THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

ELTON, EDWARD.

Gods holy minde touching matters morall which himself uttered in ten words, or Ten Commandements.

London, Christopher Meredith, 1647.

4to. In contemporary full calf. Wear and soiling to extremities. Dampstain throughout.  (8), 380, (2), 127 pp.

Rare second edition of Elton’s work containing a compendium of moral teaching based on the Ten Commandments.
Elton was a conforming clergyman within the English Church: “Even so, the book was condemned because it was “not conformable to the discipline of the Church of England”. We know more about its licensing history than we do of most books because its authorizer, Daniel Featly, who was called before the King for licensing it once the book was condemned, wrote about it a few years later in Cygnea Cantio. According to Featly, he helped Elton edit and revise the book while he was alive but once the author died, he “the off intermeddling in such a work wherein I could not suffer all things to passe as they were in that copy… yet the booke tooke the libertie to flie out of the Presse without license” (Clegg, Press Censorship in Jacobean England).

Order-nr.: 61121