The Library
1693 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
1601–1700
149 works
1681
Latin
De Re Diplomatica
Jean Mabillon · 1632–1707
A method for telling genuine medieval charters from forgeries by their script, formulas, seals, and materials, written after a Jesuit questioned his abbey's documents.
1682
English
Mary Rowlandson · c. 1637–1711
A minister's wife taken captive by Narragansett and Nipmuc raiders describes eleven weeks of forced marches, hunger, and her attempts to read providence in it.
1682
English
John Bunyan · 1628–1688
The town of Mansoul is taken by Diabolus, recaptured by Emmanuel, and then infiltrated again — an allegory of conversion and of the relapse that follows it.
1684
English
John Bunyan · 1628–1688
Christiana and her children follow her husband's road with a guide, a company of the weak, and Mr Great-heart to fight for them.
1679–1685
Latin
Francis Turretin · 1623–1687
Theology arranged as a series of disputed questions, each stating the state of the controversy precisely before answering it.
1685
French
Jeanne Guyon · 1648–1717
An argument that everyone, including the simplest, can pray by simply attending to God's presence and abandoning themselves to his will.
1686–1688
French
Pierre Bayle · 1647–1706
A refutation of the text used to justify forced conversion, arguing that an erring conscience binds as much as a correct one and must therefore be left free.
18 February 1688
English
Francis Daniel Pastorius and the Germantown Quakers
Four Quakers ask what right anyone has to buy and keep men as slaves, and whether the golden rule is not as binding for black people as for white.
c. 1682–1709
French
Jeanne Guyon · 1648–1717
An account of an unhappy marriage, widowhood, spiritual states of great intensity, and years of confinement in convents and the Bastille without trial.
1688
French
Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet · 1627–1704
An argument that Protestantism must be false because it keeps changing, traced through the disagreements of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and their successors.
drafted 1677; published 1689
English
The Particular Baptist churches of England
The Westminster Confession revised by Baptists, following it closely except on baptism, church government, and the relation of the magistrate to religion.
1689
Latin
John Locke · 1632–1704
The care of souls cannot belong to the magistrate, because belief cannot be compelled and a forced profession saves nobody — with atheists and Catholics excepted.
1690
Spanish
Juana Inés de la Cruz · 1648–1695
A critique of a celebrated sermon by a Portuguese Jesuit on Christ's greatest act of love, arguing that it was his restraint in withholding benefits.
transmitted orally from the 17th century; written down later
Japanese
Tenchi Hajimari no Koto
The hidden Christians of Japan
The Christian story as it survived two centuries of secrecy without priests or books — creation, the nativity, and the passion, mingled with Buddhist and folk elements.
1691
Spanish
Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz
Juana Inés de la Cruz · 1648–1695
A Mexican nun answers a bishop who told her to give up study, defending a woman's right to learn from scripture, from the fathers, and from her own experience.
1691
French
Jean Mabillon · 1632–1707
A defence of scholarship as a legitimate monastic work against a Trappist abbot who insisted monks should do manual labour and pray, not read.
published 1692
French
Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection · c. 1614–1691
Conversations and letters collected after the death of a lay brother who worked in a monastery kitchen and claimed to possess God as peacefully among his pots and pans as on his knees.
1693
English
George Keith · c. 1638–1716
An argument that Friends should neither buy nor keep enslaved people, and should set free those they hold after a term of service.
1693
English
William Penn · 1644–1718
Maxims on marriage, money, government, and death, written in a period of political disgrace by the founder of Pennsylvania.
1693
English
Cotton Mather · 1663–1728
A defence of the Salem trials written at the court's request, warning against spectral evidence while justifying the convictions it had produced.
dictated c. 1673–1676; published 1694
English
George Fox · 1624–1691
The founder of the Quakers records his search, the opening that Christ can speak to a person's condition directly, and years of imprisonment for refusing oaths and hat-honour.
1694; second part 1697
English
Mary Astell · 1666–1731
A plan for a religious college where women could study, pray, and teach, free from the marriage market — argued from the equal rationality of women's souls.
1695
English
John Locke · 1632–1704
An argument that the gospel requires belief in one article only — that Jesus is the Messiah — with repentance, and that everything else is inference.
1697
French
Pierre Bayle · 1647–1706
A biographical dictionary whose footnotes swallow the entries, raising sceptical difficulties about miracles, providence, and the problem of evil at every turn.
1697
French
François Fénelon · 1651–1715
A defence of pure love — loving God without regard to one's own salvation — distinguishing legitimate mysticism from the errors condemned in Molinos.
preached c. 1636–1683; published 1698
English
Benjamin Whichcote · 1609–1683
Sayings and sermons on the reasonableness of religion, the folly of narrow zeal, and the conviction that to go against reason is to go against God.
1699
French
François Fénelon · 1651–1715
A didactic romance written for the king's grandson, in which a young prince learns that war is a calamity, luxury a poison, and a king exists for his people.
c. 1689–1715
French
François Fénelon · 1651–1715
Letters to courtiers, soldiers, and women of the court on detachment, self-love, and bearing with one's own faults without discouragement.
1700
English
Robert Calef · 1648–1719
A Boston merchant's attack on the Salem proceedings and on the ministers who supported them, printed in London because no Boston press would touch it.
121–149 of 149 matching · 1693 in the Library