First edition printed in England of the Meditationes with a leaf from Phillip Melancthon’s guide to the use of logic in reading Scripture bound in.
Contemporary full calf binding with triple blind fillet to boards and three raised spine bands; diagonal lines on the edges of the boards which may suggest an Oxford binding. Small loss of leather to the outer tail of both boards. Greenish hue with speckling to the edges of the text block. First flyleaf partly torn away, early annotation remaining on the rest of the leaf with part of an alphabet and a bird sketched in black ink, probably by ‘John Guy His Book’ whose ownership signature appears at right angles on the final blank; penmanship on final pastedown. Text complete and clean: [2], 235 [i.e. 238] [4] Bound in as a final flyleaf a leaf from book four of Melanchthon’s Erotemata Dialectices, presumed not to be an English imprint.
Gerhard was a German Lutheran church leader and theologian. The conjunction with Melanchthon in the leaf bound in from binder’s waste seems quite appropriate though the puzzle remains as to how an English binder in the 1630s had Melanchthon pages at hand in his bindery.
