00.3. Prefatory NOTE

Prefatory NOTE The expository sermons which compose the treatise, originally entitled, in the quaint phraseology of the age, ’Bowels Opened,’ (no doubt derived from the Hebraic idea of the seat of the affections being in the ’bowels,’ Song of Solomon 5:4; and compare 1 John 3:17) passed through three editions, as follows:—

(a) 1st edition, 4to, 1639.

(b) 2d edition, 4to, 1641. There is no intimation of its being a ’2d edition;’ but it really was so. The pagination is wholly different from a.

(c) 3d edition, 4to, 1648. This is designated ’3d edition,’ and the pagination differs from a and b. Prefixed to it is a portrait of Sibbes, ætat 58. Underneath it are these lines, without signature or initial:

’Thy learning, meekness, wisedome, heavenly minde, Soe full of love, soe zealous, soe discreete, Thy works, ye Church, yea Heaven, where they doe finde A crowne—declare, for earth they were not meete.

Whoe, slighting thee, himselfe preferrs before, Let him gett to thee,—he shall then know more.’ Our text follows a, with comparison of b and c for correction of misprints. Its title-page is given below.* G.