CORNELIUS'S CHARACTER. A SERMON PREACH'D THE LORD'S-DAY AFTER THE FUNERAL OF MR. CORNELIUS THAYER, ONE OF THE DEACONS OF THE FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON; WHO DIED, APRIL 10. 1745. AETAT. 60.
Boston: Printed for D. Gookin in Marlborough-Street... 1745. 38pp, with the half title but lacking the final blank leaf. Upper portion of half title restored in blank, not affecting the text but eliminating some of the upper border. Stitched, some light spotting [more so to the outer margin of the half title], else Very Good.
Thayer, says Chauncy, had the character of his namesake, the devout Cornelius described in the Book of Acts. In his Sermon he criticizes the "Church of Rome" and the Great Awakening, whose adherents "go about to invent Methods of pleasing God, as tho' those of his own instituting were not sufficient. This indeed has been too much the Way of the World in all past Ages, and is so at this Day."
Chauncy "was undoubtedly the most influential clergyman of his time in Boston, and, with the exception of Jonathan Edwards, in all New England." DAB. He was Edwards's most influential opponent of the Great Awakening and was, as DAB puts it, "a man of the intellect utterly distrusting the emotions as calculated to befog and pervert the mind."
FIRST EDITION. Evans 5556. Item #30403
Price: $375.00