Lost Treasures

Puritans were "people of the Book," and as such, they read and wrote prolifically. "Puritanism was an intrinsically bookish movement" (N.H. Keeble, "Puritanism and Literature," in John Coffey and Paul C.H. Lim, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, p. 309). We are grateful to those who republish their works today and it is a blessing when long-lost works suddenly come to light.

There are some works by Puritans that, in God's providence, may never again see the light. Here are some of those lost treasures that I have read about from time to time. It makes one wonder, with pious reverence, "What if...?"

Samuel Rutherford is said to have prepared an exposition of Isaiah, and Robert Blair an exposition of Proverbs, both of which would have contributed to the Scottish Puritan Commentary Series, but are supposed to be lost.

Henry Ainsworth, famous for his Annotations on the Pentateuch, Psalms and the Song of Solomon, his Psalter and other writings, also had many other Biblical expositions which were not published following his "untimely" death (he is thought by some to have been poisoned). A search for those unpublished commentaries was made by John Dury on behalf of Samuel Hartlib and John Worthington (tutor of Matthew Poole, who is also thought by some to have been poisoned), who were seeking to aid the work of a committee charged with preparing a planned revision of the King James Bible with marginal notes and desired to find Ainsworth's unpublished manuscripts. Dury sought for Ainsworth's nachlass in the Netherlands, but ultimately his son refused to allow them to be published and, as far as I know, they are lost to history.

Willem Teellinck wrote a commentary on the Pentateuch, Verklaeringe Over de Vijf Boecken Moses (Exposition of the Five Books of Moses), which was ready for print shortly before he died at the age of 50, but was lost.

Patrick Simpson, cousin of George Gillespie, reported (as recorded by Robert Wodrow, Analecta, Vol. 1, pp. 159-160) that at his death (at the tender age of 36), "He had all his sermons in England, part polemicall, part practicall, prepared for the press; and but one copy of them, which he told the printer's wife he used to deal with, and bad her have a care of them. And she was prevailed on by some money from the Sectarys, who wer mauled by him, to suppress them." And so his English sermons were lost.

William Ames' personal library was donated to Harvard College and formed the nucleus of it, but it was all (save one copy of John Downame's The Christian Warfare) destroyed by fire in 1763.

But who knows, perhaps some of these are waiting to be discovered after all? There may be lost treasures, more precious that pirates' gold, yet to be found.