The Afflicted Man's Companion A Collection of Comfortable Texts For Dying Believers The Church's Danger And The Minister's Duty Declared in a Sermon Preached at the Opening of the Synod of Angus and Mearns at Montrose With A Preface and Postscript Touching some more Evils of the Present Time A Sacramental Directory: or a Treatise Concerning the Sanctification of a Communion Sabbath

John Willison

Published by William Paton for William Brownlie, Glasgow, 1798

About this Item

Leatherbound volume containing two scarce texts and a sermon by John Willison. John Willison, (1680 3 May 1750) was an evangelical minister of the Church of Scotland and a writer of Christian literature. His treatise on the sanctification of the Lord's day was in response to the policies of James VI and the Episcopalian clergy. It provoked a reply from James Small, an Episcopalian, which was answered by Willison in his Letter from a Parochial Bishop to a Prelatical Gentleman. After this, he wrote a devotional work: A Sacramental Directory. Small replied to his earlier Letter, upon which Willison published An Apology for the Church of Scotland. He then moved on to political topics with A Letter to an English Member of Parliament. After the ejection of Ebenezer Erskine and his fellow-ministers for opposition to patronage, Willison attacked their exclusion in a sermon to the Synod of Angus and Mearns in 1733 (published as "The Church's Danger"). He tried to win them back and a majority was gained in the General Assembly of 1734 as a healing measure. As a result Willison was sent to London as part of a deputation to labour for the repeal of patronage, but they were only successful insofar as they gained some important concessions. Erskine and his colleagues were not satisfied and formed a separate presbytery in 1739. In 1737 he wrote one of his most famous and most reprinted works The Afflicted Man's Companion, written, as he himself said, with the benevolent intention "that the afflicted may have a book in their houses, and at their bed-sides, as a monitor to preach to them in private, when they are restrained from hearing sermons in public." In a full calf binding. There is some wear to the extremities including rubbing and bumping with some loss to the leather, particularly on the spine and corners of the boards. The binding is fairly tight and firm. Internally the pages are generally age-toned with some handling marks and the odd spot. The title page and first few pages to The Afflicted Man's Companion are missing. The text begins with page ix of 'To The Reader'. Half of page xii/xiii is present. There is an ink inscription on the front pastedown. Fair.

Seller Inventory # LTH3-E-9

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Afflicted Man's Companion A Collection of Comfortable Texts For Dying Believers The Church's Danger And The Minister's Duty Declared in a Sermon Preached at the Opening of the Synod of Angus and Mearns at Montrose With A Preface and Postscript Touching some more Evils of the Present Time A Sacramental Directory: or a Treatise Concerning the Sanctification of a Communion Sabbath
• Publisher: William Paton for William Brownlie, Glasgow
• Publication Date: 1798
• Binding: Leather
• Illustrator: None
• Condition: Fair
• Book Type: book