The Grovnd of the Catholike and Roman Religion in the Word of God. With the Antiquity and Continuance therof, throughout all Kingdomes and Ages. Collected out of diuers Conferences, Discourses, and Disputes, which M. Patricke Anderson, of the Society of Iesvs, had at seuerall tymes with sundry Bishops and Ministers of Scotland, at his last imprisonment in Edenburgh, for the Catholike Faith, in the yeares of our Lord 1620 and 1621. Sent vnto an Honourable Personage by the Compyler and Prisoner himselfe (3 parts or vols)
by Patrick Anderson
1623 first edition, English College Press, Permissu superiorum (Saint-Omer, France), 5 3/8 x 7 inches tall volume in brown vellum, with separate title pages and pagination for each of the three parts/volumes, [8], 60; [6], 552 [i.e. 152]; [4], 174, [2] pp. (406 pages total.) Heavy soiling, rubbing, creasing and edgewear to covers, with three inches of chipping to the lower edge of the front cover. Scottish Episcopal Church (Edinburgh) bookplate to verso of front cover. Heavy soiling and edge-chipping to title page, with chipping and creasing to the lower tips of the first eight or so (unnumbered) pages. Slight to heavy staining and foxing throughout. Lacking blank endpapers, and four pages (pages 3-6 of the second part) are supplied by facsimile pages bound in, but the copy is otherwise complete and original. Heavy creasing to the last two pages of text (pages 173-174 of the third part), with heavy creasing, soiling and holes to the last leaf, which contains the author's 'advertisement' and errata. Despite these detractions, still a decent, complete copy of this exceptionally rare and important recusant work. ESTC (No. S100174) locates only eight holdings at institutions worldwide - at Bodleian Library (Oxford, England), St. Edmund's College (Ware, England), Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), Huntington Library (San Marino, California), Folger Shakespeare (Washington, DC ), Newberry (Chicago), St. Louis University and Union Theological Seminary (New York). References: Early English Books, 1475-1640 (STC, 2nd Ed) 575.
Subtitle: With the antiquity and continuance therof, throughout all kingdomes and ages. Collected out of diuers conferences, discourses, and disputes, which M. Patricke Anderson of the Society of Iesus, had at seuerall tymes, with sundry bishops and ministers of Scotland, at his last imprisonment in Edenburgh, for the Catholike faith, in the yeares of our Lord 1620. and 1621. Sent vnto an honourable personage, by the complyer, and prisoner himselfe.
A work that demonstrates a careful study of the scriptural arguments for the Catholic faith, seeking to establish the Biblical basis for Catholic beliefs and practices, written by Fr. Patrick Anderson (1575-1624), a Scottish Jesuit known as a missioner, college head, and author.
Anderson became a Jesuit in 1597, quickly acquiring a reputation as linguist, mathematician, philosopher, and divine. Sent to Scotland as a missioner, he arrived via London where he was in November 1609. He had hairbreadth escapes from the authorities. He left Scotland for Paris to meet his Jesuit superior, James Gordon, late in 1611; at that time there was only a single Catholic priest in Scotland. Anderson gathered nearly a hundred young Scots as candidates for the priesthood, and in 1615 he became the first Jesuit rector of the Scots College in Rome.
Returning to Scotland, Anderson was betrayed, and committed to the Old Tolbooth, Edinburgh. During his confinement there he held several disputations with Presbyterian divines. While imprisoned in Edinburgh, he also compiled the Memoirs of the Scotch Saints, formerly in manuscript at the Scots College in Paris.
Threatened in prison with the torture of 'the boot,' he was liberated by the intercession, it was thought, of the French ambassador Antoine Coiffier-Ruzé, marquis d'Effiat, who chose him for his confessor. He died in London a year after this work was published, in September 1624.