[Rarebooks] fa: JOVIAN: AN ANSWER TO JULIAN THE APOSTATE - 1683 (A Defense of James II)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, May 22. More details and images can  
be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name  
arch_in_la.

http://shop.ebay.com/arch_in_la/m.html?_trksid=p4340.l2562

Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

[George Hickes:] Jovian. Or, An Answer to Julian the Apostate· By a  
Minister of London. London: Printed by Sam. Roycroft, for Walter  
Kettilby, at the Bishops Head in St. Paul’s Church-yard, 1683. FIRST  
EDITION. Bound in full period speckled calf with modern leather spine  
label; 8vo; [80] + 300 + [4] pp.; 4 pp. of publisher's adverts at end;  
2 fold-out genealogical tables. Wing H1852; ESTC R24372.
Mild wear and rubbing to the boards, hinges and extremities, small  
rough patch on front cover, short crack to the foot of the front hinge  
but the board is secure; an early/contemporary owner has inked the  
author's name on the title-page and a notation on the front free- 
endpaper; leaves  with a few occasional small spots, a few corners  
bumped; otherwise exceedingly clean, bright and fresh, firmly bound. A  
handsome copy.

A defense of the succession of James II by George Hickes (1642-1715).  
Hickes was a firm believer in the divine right of kings and in passive  
obedience as the duty of their subjects, hence, though a Protestant  
divine himself, he remained loyal to the Catholic James. Hickes "had  
entered the controversy over James in 1683, following the publication  
the previous year of Samuel Johnson's Juiian the Apostate. This work  
had claimed to show that Christians under the Roman emperor, far from  
observing passive obedience to an apostate ruler, had even considered  
violence against him. Hickes, in Jovian; or an Answer to Juilan,  
pointed out that Roman succession was not hereditary [and] he  
postulated that a Bill of Exclusion might be invalid... The 'Essential  
Rights of Soveraignty,' he argued, rendered kings unaccountable to  
their subjects for their actions. He saw 'passive obedience' as the  
appropriate Anglican establishment response to a Roman Catholic  
king... Thus, Hickes had supported the succession of James despite its  
inherent dangers to his church, and probably as a reward for this  
support had become dean of Worcester" (Richard L. Harris: The  
Correspondence of George Hickes and his Collaborators on the Thesaurus  
linguarum spetentrionalium). Having bet on the wrong horse, however,  
Hickes saw his "life and career catastrophically affected by events"  
following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the coronation of  
William and Mary.