The Protestants Apologie For the Roman Church. by [ANDERTON (JAMES).]

Deuided into three seuerall Tractes. Whereof The first [ Concerneth the Antiquity & Continuance of the Ro- Man Church & Religion, euer since the Apostles [sic] ti mes. [sic] The second [ 1. That the Protestants Religion was not so much as In being, at, or before Luthers [sic] first appearing. [ 2. That the Marks of the true Church are apperteyning To the Roman, and wholly wanting to the seuerall Churches, begun by Luther & Caluin. The third [ That Catholics are no lesse loyall, and dutifull to Their Soueraigne, than Protestants. All which is vndertaken, & proued by testimonies of the learned Protestants themselues. With A Conclusion to the reuerend Iudges, and other the grauve And learned Sages of the law. By Iohn Brereley Priest. Deut.32.Vers.31. For their God is not as our God, euen our enemies being iudges. And I will set the Ægyptians against the Ægyptians: so euery one shall fight Against his brother. Esay 19.Vers.2. Permissu Superiorum. [St Omer, English College Press,] Anno M.DC.VIII. [1608]. Pott 4to format, not watermarked; half-title not called for; first gathering, ¶, a cancel; title-page, ‘Authors [sic] Advertisement to Him That shall answere this Treatise’ on verso of title and the three following leaves, followed by ‘A table Of the contents Of the several tracts, Chapters, and sections Conteyned in this Booke’, 6pp., ‘A Catalogve of Certaine Fathers: And the yeares in which they liued’, 2pp., A table of Certaine protestant Wryters, and their Particvlar vvritings: Whose folio, or page (for more ready, and certaine direction) Are speciallie alleadged in the subsequent Discourse: And Of their seuerall Editions or yeare of print...’, 9pp., ‘To the reader’, 1p., Preface, pp.1 - 56, dedication ‘To The Kinges Most excellent Maiesty, 4pp., The First tract, pp.57 - 262, [blank (pp.263 -264)], ‘The Second tract’ pp.265 - 639, [blank page (not included in numbering)], ‘The third Tract’, pp.640 - 711, [blank (p.712)], ‘The Conclvsion To The ivdges And covnsell Of England’, pp.[713] - 751; ‘An Alphabeticall Table or index Directing the Reader to the Principall matters conteyned In this Booke’, 25pp., ‘Fovre several Catalogves Of the Forraine Protestants adverse VVritinges one against other’, 4pp., ‘A second Catalogve Of bookes pvblished By the Calvinists, Against The Lutherans’, 4pp., ‘A third Catalogve Of bookes pvblished By the Lvtherans Against The Caluinistes’. 5pp., ‘A fovrth Catalogve Of the protestants Many bookes And vvritinges In generall...’ 10¼pp., ‘The avthors [sic] Aduertisment to the Reader’, 1¼pp. ‘A Table of certaine Additions, omissions, and other Errours escaped in the Printing’ 8pp., ‘Certaine omissions Which being longer Then to be corrected by the Readers [sic] pen, are heere placed Togeather, that the Reader may yet at his pleasure di- Scerne how, and where they are to come in, by way Of reading. And in reprinting of this Treatise They may be inserted in their Proper places’, 10pp., ‘An Addition of certaine Errovrs and omissions Besides the former’, 4pp.; ¶⁴, *³, **⁴, ***² A - G⁴, H⁶, I, K - T, V, X - Ii, KK - Tt, Vu, XX - Iii, Kkk - Ttt, Vvv, Xxx - Iiii, Kkkk - Tttt, Vuuu⁴, Xxxx⁶, Yyyy - Iiiii, Kkkkk, Lllll⁴. A fine new binding by Trevor Lloyd: dark brown calf, spine with four raised bands, elaborately tooled blind on sides and spine in imitation of the early seventeenth century original (v. note); red lettering-piece on spine ruled and tooled gilt, lettered with title only; sympathetic archival quality end-papers. Presented in a substantial fleece-lined clamshell box, with a leather lettering-piece ruled and tooled gilt. Title-page and last two leaves dusty; light damp-staining to Tttt3 onwards; occasional fingering of corners; last two leaves chipped at head and restored with old paper bearing notes (v. below); 575 errata, and close to 100 additions and omitted notes, some running to upwards of two hundred words, corrected or added in text, in ink, in a small, neat, contemporary hand (v. note), those in the extreme margins insignificantly cropped; slip of old paper tipped onto penultimate leaf, bearing an additional note, written into the text, but not noted in the printed ‘Additions’, etc.; small cinder hole to blank inner margin of Fff4; small hole in Xxx1 due to an original paper flaw, with loss of part of two words; worming to blank inner margins from Ttt4 to Ffff2, not touching text and for the most part barely visible; in general, however a very nice, crisp copy. The Printer’s copy with extensive Authorial revisions.An important text, vastly expanded from the original printing of 1604 published in Douay, probably by J. Mogur, which, according to the British Library listing, had only 191pp. There were three issues of the 1608 printing, successively expanded, this, with the first gathering a cancel, and the added leaves 5L3 and 5L4 at the end, being the last and most complete. Further editions were published in 1610, 1615, 1623, and 1624, the last two posthumous, the author having died in 1618. Remarkable for its balance, detail, and a scholarly intent unusual in the period, as also for the several exhaustive bibliographical checklists it contains, it was reprinted as recently as 1970, 1971, and 2013. In the present copy the brief errata have been corrected throughout, including those noted in the last two supplementary leaves, whilst the longer additions and omissions have been added where possible in their place (such as the 222 word addition written on the blank verso of 2K4), and otherwise cross-referenced to the printed sections at the end. The printed alterations run only to p.733, but the notes added in ms. to 5L4v carry the corrections through to p.740, whilst the slip pasted onto 5L2v adds an addition not recorded in the printed text, though corrected in ms. in its place, and there are notes added in ms. to p.747 and to 5D3r that are not otherwise recorded at all. Nor are some other additions, including a ms. index to the sections, that are added to the title-page. All are in the same hand. This, together with the fact that the corrections of errata have been so exhaustive - extending even to minor matters of style, as ‘grounded not only’ for ‘not grounded only’ at l.9, p.24, a correction that surely a common reader would not have bothered to make on so densely printed a text - suggest that this is in fact an author’s copy, prepared when the book was being printed to enable the preparation of the added leaves of errata, and used by him, probably, as a printer’s copy for the editions either of 1610 or 1615. The nature of some of the thumb-marks in some lower corners are in fact suggestive of a printing shop, whilst the author himself in his ‘Advertisment’ on 5I2r indicates that the errors and additions “being heere exactly gathered by the Author himself,” the reader may “expect in the next Edition, or reprinting of this Treatise, such errours and Omissions as haue now escaped, to be corrected, and inserted into their proper places.” That this is a printer’s copy is supported further by the nature of some of the ms. notes, one at the foot of p.39, for instance, running: “read what is to be here inserted at the end of this booke on yt besyde of the first leaf of Omissions etc. there place yt under Pag.39”. The title-page bears an ownership inscription which we have not been able to decipher, written, apparently, in another hand, but which at any rate does not say ‘Anderton’. It may have been added by an early owner, or have been that of the printer or typesetter. The work has sometimes been attributed to James Anderton’s younger brother, Lawrence, who eventually became a Jesuit, but this is now known not to have been the case. He may have had some part in it, however, for on I5v the author states: “I must needes acknowledge, that a good part of this labour was the collections of a Worshipfull and reuerend Priest, gathered together some few yeares before he entered into holy Orders”. In this copy, probably as always, p.146 is mis-numbered ‘246’, and p.360 ‘560’, 2I2 is mis-signed ‘3’; 2M1 has the catchword ‘48’ instead of ‘49’; and gathering 4X is foliated, not paginated, without breaking the numbering, pagination being resumed with gathering 4Y. When we obtained this volume it had already been rebound some time in the nineteenth century, in imitation of the original, which explains the occasional slight cropping of a few of the notes. The nineteenth century binding had utilised badly tanned leather, and was then disintegrating. The present re-binding, which imitates the nineteenth century rendering of the original, but in a fine, traditionally tanned and dyed leather, did not involve re-sewing, so no further cropping was involved. STC 3604.5; STC (2nd edition), 3605; ESTC S233; Alison & Rogers, Catholic Books, 133; the Americas are mentioned on p.521, but it is not in Sabin; COPAC records copies at the British Library, Oxford, York Minster, and Hereford Cathedral only. All books listed by Robert Temple are first editions unless otherwise stated.