THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY

THE REFORMED LIBRARIE-KEEPER

(1650)

JOHN DURY

Introduction by

RICHARD H. POPKIN

and

THOMAS F. WRIGHT

Publication Number 220

WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY

University of California, Los Angeles

1983

GENERAL EDITOR
DAVID STUART RODES, University of California, Los Angeles

EDITORS
  CHARLES L. BATTEN, University of California, Los Angeles
  GEORGE ROBERT GUFFEY, University of California, Los Angeles
  MAXIMILLIAN E. NOVAK, University of California, Los Angeles
  NANCY M. SHEA, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
  THOMAS WRIGHT, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

ADVISORY EDITORS
  RALPH COHEN, University of Virginia
  WILLIAM E. CONWAY, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
  VINTON A. DEARING, University of California, Los Angeles
  PHILLIP HARTH, University of Wisconsin, Madison
  LOUIS A. LANDA, Princeton University
  EARL MINER, Princeton University
  JAMES SUTHERLAND, University College, London
  NORMAN J.W. THROWER, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
  ROBERT VOSPER, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
  JOHN M. WALLACE, University of Chicago

PUBLICATIONS MANAGER
NANCY M. SHEA, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
BEVERLY J. ONLEY, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
FRANCES MIRIAM REED, University of California, Los Angeles

INTRODUCTION

This work, with its quaint sentiments and its grim picture of whatlibrarians were like in the mid-seventeenth century, is more than acuriosity. John Dury was a very important figure in the PuritanRevolution, offering proposal after proposal to prepare England for itsrole in the millennium. The Reformed Librarie-Keeper is an integralpart of that preparation. To appreciate it one must look at it in termsof the plans of Dury and his associates, Samuel Hartlib and Johann AmosComenius, to reform the intellectual institutions of England so that theprophecies in the books of Daniel and Revelation could be fulfilledthere.

John Dury (1596-1680), the son of a Scottish Puritan, was raised inHolland.[1] He studied at the University of Leiden, then at the FrenchReformed seminaries at Sedan and Leiden, and later at Oxford. He wasordained a Protestant minister and served first at Cologne and then atthe English church in the West Prussian city of Elbing. There he came incontact with Samuel Hartlib (?-1662), a merchant, who was to devotehimself to many religious and scientific projects in England, and withJohann Amos Comenius (1592-1670), the leader of the Moravian Brethren,as well as with other great educational reformers of the Continent. Thethree of them shared a common vision—that the advancement of knowledge,the purification of the Christian churches, and the impending conversionof the Jews were all antecedent s

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