The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650)

The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650)

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Title: The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650)
Author: John Dury
Release Date: February 28, 2005 [EBook #15199]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY
THE REFORMED LIBRARIE-KEEPER
(1650)
JOHN DURY
Introduction by RICHARD H. POPKIN
and THOMAS F. WRIGHT
Publication Number 220
WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY
University of California, Los Angeles
1983

GENERAL EDITOR DAVID STUART RODES, _University of California, Los Angeles_
EDITORS CHARLES L. BATTEN, _University of California, Los Angeles_ GEORGE ROBERT GUFFEY, _University of California, Los Angeles_ MAXIMILLIAN E. NOVAK, _University of California, Los Angeles_ NANCY M. SHEA, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library THOMAS WRIGHT, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library ADVISORY EDITORS RALPH COHEN, University of Virginia WILLIAM E. CONWAY, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library VINTON A. DEARING, _University of California, Los Angeles_ PHILLIP HARTH, _University of Wisconsin, Madison_ LOUIS A. LANDA, Princeton University EARL MINER, Princeton University JAMES SUTHERLAND, _University College, London_ NORMAN J.W. THROWER, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library ROBERT VOSPER, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library JOHN M. WALLACE, University of Chicago PUBLICATIONS MANAGER NANCY M. SHEA, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library CORRESPONDING SECRETARY BEVERLY J. ONLEY, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library EDITORIAL ASSISTANT FRANCES MIRIAM REED, _University of California, Los Angeles_

INTRODUCTION
This work, with its quaint sentiments and its grim picture of what librarians were like in the mid-seventeenth century, is more than a curiosity. John Dury was a very important figure in the Puritan Revolution, offering proposal after proposal to prepare England for its role in the millennium. _The Reformed Librarie-Keeper_ is an integral part of that preparation. To appreciate it one must look at it in terms of the plans of Dury and his associates, Samuel Hartlib and Johann Amos Comenius, to reform the intellectual institutions of England so that the prophecies in the books of Daniel and Revelation could be fulfilled there.
John Dury (1596-1680), the son of a Scottish Puritan, was raised in Holland.[1] He studied at the University of Leiden, then at the French Reformed seminaries at Sedan and Leiden, and later at Oxford. He was ordained a Protestant minister and served first at Cologne and then at the English church in the West Prussian city of Elbing. There he came in contact with Samuel Hartlib (?-1662), a merchant, who was to devote himself to many religious and scientific projects in England, and with Johann Amos Comenius (1592-1670), the leader of the Moravian Brethren, as well as with other great educational reformers of the Continent. The three of them shared a common vision--that the advancement of knowledge, the purification of the Christian churches, and the impending conversion of the Jews were all antecedent steps to the commencement in the foreseeable future of the millennium, the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth. They saw the struggles of the Thirty Years' War and the religious conflict in England as part of their development of providential history.
In terms of their common vision, each of them strove during the decade 1630-40 to help the world prepare for the great events to come. Comenius started redoing the educational system through his textbooks and set forth plans for attaining universal knowledge. Hartlib moved from Germany to England, where he became a central organizing figure in both the nascent scientific world and the theological world. He was in contact with a wide variety of intellectuals and brought their ideas together. (For instance, he apprised Dury of the millenarian theory of Joseph Mede, which was to be so influential in the Puritan Revolution, and he spread Comenius's ideas in England.) Dury devoted himself principally to trying to unite all of the Protestant churches in Europe and to this end began his peregrinations from Sweden and Germany to Holland, Switzerland, France, and England. These travels were to continue throughout the rest of his life, as he tried to negotiate an agreement on the essentials of Christianity in preparation for Jesus' return.
In 1640, as the Puritan Revolution began, Hartlib, Comenius, and Dury saw the developments in England as the opportunity to put their scientific-religious plans into effect. They joined together in London in 1641 and, with strong support, offered proposals to prepare England for the millennium. They proposed setting up a new university in London for developing universal knowledge. In spite of the strong backing they had from leaders of the State and Church, Parliament was unable to fund the project because of the turmoil of the time. Comenius left for the Continent, while Hartlib and Dury advanced other