1645 John Napier 'Plaine Discovery Of Revelation Of St. John' Edinburgh Imprint.

‘A plaine discovery of the whole Revelation of St. John: set down in two treatises: the one searching and proving the true interpretation thereof: the other applying the same paraphrastically and historically to the text. By John Napier, Lord of Marchiston. With a resolution of certain doubts, moved by some well affected brethren. Whereunto are annexed certain oracles of Sibylla, agreeing with the Revelation, and other places of Scripture. And also an epistle which was omitted in the last edition.’

John Napier [1550-1617]

Edinburgh: printed for Andro Wilson, and are to be sold at his shop, at the foot of the Ladies steps, 1645.

 
Quarto. [7.50’’ tall x 6.00’’ wide].

ESTC ref; 006116649. Wing N152.
Collates textually complete, lacking a single ‘errata’ leaf at the close only [12], 244, 32, 31-38p.

A good, solid and sound copy of this scarce commentary upon the book of Revelation. Minor marks, blemishes or reading wear commensurate with age else sound. Some occasional toning or light foxing else a generally clean and tidy copy. Occasional grubby marginal marks in the odd place. Overall a nice copy of a rare work.

Ownership label re-laid to the inner front board which is difficult to read but appears to be ‘James Indorwick, Edin. Castle 1780’. Also with a historic newspaper article detailing John Napier and his life.

 
John Napier of Merchiston.
(1 February 1550 – 4 April 1617).   

Nicknamed Marvellous Merchiston, was a Scottish landowner known as a mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. He was the 8th Laird of Merchiston. His Latinized name was Ioannes Neper.
 
John Napier is best known as the discoverer of logarithms. He also invented the so-called "Napier's bones" and made common the use of the decimal point in arithmetic and mathematics.
 
Napier's birthplace, Merchiston Tower in Edinburgh, is now part of the facilities of Edinburgh Napier University. There is a memorial to him at St Cuthbert's at the west side of Edinburgh.
 
Napier had an interest in the Book of Revelation, from his student days at St. Salvator's College, St Andrews. Under the influence of the sermons of Christopher Goodman, he developed a strongly anti-papal reading, going as far as to say that the Pope was the Antichrist in some of his writings.
 
Napier regarded A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St. John (1593) as his most important work. It was written in English, unlike his other publications, in order to reach the widest audience and so that, according to Napier, "the simple of this island may be instructed". A Plaine Discovery used mathematical analysis of the Book of Revelation to attempt to predict the date of the Apocalypse. Napier identified events in chronological order which he believed were parallels to events described in the Book of Revelation believing that Revelation's structure implied that the prophecies would be fulfilled incrementally. In this work Napier dated the seventh trumpet to 1541, and predicted the end of the world would occur in either 1688 or 1700. Napier did not believe that people could know the true date of the Apocalypse, but claimed that since the Bible contained so many clues about the end, God wanted the Church to know when the end was coming.
 
In his dedication of the Plaine Discovery to James VI, dated 29 Jan 1594, Napier urged the king to see "that justice be done against the enemies of God's church," and counselled the King "to reform the universal enormities of his country, and first to begin at his own house, family, and court." The volume includes nine pages of Napier's English verse. It met with success at home and abroad. In 1600 Michiel Panneel produced a Dutch translation, and this reached a second edition in 1607. In 1602 the work appeared at La Rochelle in a French version, by Georges Thomson, revised by Napier, and that also went through several editions (1603, 1605, and 1607). A new edition of the English original was called for in 1611, when it was revised and corrected by the author, and enlarged by the addition of ‘with a resolution of certain doubts, moved by some well affected brethren’ this appeared simultaneously at Edinburgh and London. The author stated that he still intended to publish a Latin edition, but it never appeared. A German translation, by Leo de Dromna, of the first part of Napier's work appeared at Gera in 1611, and of the whole by Wolfgang Meyer at Frankfurt-am-Main, in 1615. Among Napier's followers was Matthew Cotterius (Matthieu Cottière).

 
Bound in an attractive new half-calf binding with marbled boards.

Raised bands, blind lines and a hand-tooled, gilt-lettered label to the spine.


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