AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE BOOK OF COMMON-PRAYER, AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE SACRAMENTS, AND OTHER RITES AND CEREMONIES OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. . . by Warner, Ferdinando - 1754

London: Printed for the Proprietors, and sold by James Hodges, 1754. Folio. [684] pp. plus four plates (including frontispiece), as called for. Contemporary speckled calf, gilt rules, raised bands, gilt leather label. Modern bookplate in front pastedown and small monogram inkstamp in frontispiece leaf recto and title page, earlier inkstamp of Cornwall House in front free endpaper. Front joint split at head of spine, headband perished, some edgwear to binding, reinforcement of front hinge in clear tape, minor worming in lower margin of first twelve leaves. Contents bright and clean. Good to very good.

Scarce first collected edition, complete with four plates. The plates depict St. Paul's Cathedral, worshipers at the Church of St. Margaret at Westminster Abbey, the Last Supper, and the Baptism of Jesus. Issued in weekly parts between 1752 and 1754 "as that the common people could purchase it with ease, and neither the price nor size might affright them from pursuing it," the book was intended to provide a detailed explanation of Anglican liturgy through extensive historical and theological annotation of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The DNB describes the author, Ferdinando Warner (1703-1768), an Anglican minister based in London and later Surrey, as "much esteemed as a popular preacher, and his writings show him to have been a man of wide learning and more than ordinary ability."

DNB 59, p. 393. ESTC T154488.