(EARLY AMERICAN IMPRINTS) [Mather Increase] Angelographia or

Sale 2486 - Lot 283

Price Realized: $ 3,500

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000

(EARLY AMERICAN IMPRINTS.) [Mather, Increase.] Angelographia, or a Discourse Concerning the Nature and Power of the Holy Angels, bound with (as issued) A Disquisition Concerning Angelical Apparitions. 5-132, 36 [of 44] pages. Small 8vo, contemporary calf, worn, crudely rebacked at an early date; without the portrait plate found inserted in some copies, lacking 16 leaves (the title page, 7 other preliminaries, B1-2, K8, and M1, M5-8), some leaves loose, edges worn, minor dampstaining. [Boston: Samuel Phillips, 1696]

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Increase Mather (1639-1723) was son-in-law of John Cotton and the father of Cotton Mather, and president of Harvard; he expressed skepticism about the evidence presented at the 1692 Salem Witch Trials. This study of the role of angels in the scriptures is one of his more enduring works. Mather insists that "the Angels are real beings" (page I:5), and notes that in "a time of War, wonderful Victories are obtained by the Invisible Agency of the Angels of Heaven" (page I:35). However, he warns against excess: "Although Angelical Apparitions are not to be expected in these days; nevertheless, the Ministry of Holy Angels, doth continue still" (page I:63). In an apparent reference to the recent witch hysteria, he notes on page 3 of the second part that "We in New-England have lately seen not only miserable Creatures Pinched, Burnt, Wounded, Tortured by Invisible Agents, but some Ecstatical Persons who have strongly imagined that they have been attended with Celestial Visitants . . . of dangerous consequence to themselves and others." On the following page he asks "whether Angelical Apparitions may in these Dayes be expected; and if so, how may they be discerned from Satanical Illusions?" Evans 756; Sabin 46630. We trace no other examples of this important 17th-century Boston imprint at auction since 1920.