PREFACE 



THE following Catalogue will be most easily understood, as respects its nature and 

 purpose, from a statement both of what it is not, and of what it is. 



It is not bibliographical or descriptive. A few notes, taken chiefly from writers who 

 are regarded as authorities, such as Panzer, Le Long, Home, Pettigrew, and Cotton, 

 have been added to several of the entries under the heading, " Bibles" ; and an occasional 

 explanatory statement will be found in other parts of the volume. But these are neither 

 so numerous nor so elaborate as to entitle the Catalogue to a character which it was 

 never designed that it should possess. 



Neither is it a classed Catalogue. Partly from the nature of the case ; partly because 

 the Library is, to a considerable extent, theological ; and, still more, because it could be 

 accomplished without making a dangerous experiment in a field where success has never 

 been attained, and is probably unattainable, there is a classification, to the extent of 

 bringing together, under the several heads, all the Bibles, Confessions, Catechisms, 

 Liturgies, and important Collections of works of the Fathers. But no farther attempt 

 has been made in this direction : while, even in the cases alluded to, the several entries 

 will be found, given more fully, in all instances except the Bibles, under the names of 

 the commentators, translators, authors, or editors, as circumstances required, where the 

 names of such appear, or have been discovered, an arrangement modified only by the 

 rule regarding anonymous works, which will be afterwards explained. 



Nor, finally, is the Catalogue exhaustive, in the sense of analysing, except to a very 

 limited extent, the larger Collections, more especially, which the Library contains. 

 Such an analysis would have occupied a longer time and a larger space than were 

 deemed desirable. As a general rule, the catalogue of every library ought to be so full 

 as to be independent of all other catalogues. But a departure from this rule is, in the 

 present case, the less to be regretted, inasmuch as an analysis, such as that to which 

 reference has been made, will be found in Darling's Cyclopaedia Bibliographica, the 



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