Ward, John; [Whitefield, George]. The Transcendant Excellencies of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, In his Person and Characters; Recommended to the Attention and Esteem of Mankind. With The Scriptural Account of the Nature and Benefits of Faith in Christ, and The Evil and Danger of Unbelief. With Practical Reflections. London: Printed for John Ward, at the King's Arms in Cornhill, 1754. First Edition. [12560]
Removed, no wrapper, title page not quite detached, 17 x 10 cm (6 3/4 x 4 inches). 72 pages, counted and complete. The pamphlet is started to separate into sections; there is light foxing, and some smudges. Fair. Pamphlet.
This scarce testimony to the Great Awakening is not recorded in either of the bibliographies by Richard Owen Roberts, Revival Literature: An Annotated Bibliography, or Whitefield in Print.
Dedicated "To the Reverend George Whitefield. Sir, As no one in the present age has with more zeal, and greater success, promoted the important knowledge of a crucified Saviour among mankind, than yourself, I thought none more proper to dedicate this weak and humble Essay unto, chiefly collected from the writings of others, on that transcendantly glorious and delightful subject, the Lord Jesus Christ, in his greatness and his goodness..."
The work is divided into these sections: 1. The knowledge of Christ recommended; 2. The dignity and excellencies of Christ in his nature; 3. The excellencies of Christ in his characters; 4. Faith in Christ described; 5. Motives to faith in Christ; 6. The evil and danger of rejecting Christ.
John Ward was a London bookseller who supported the ministry of George Whitefield by printing, selling, and distributing Whitefield's sermons and tracts. The compilation offered here is both dedicated to Whitefield and contains an example of the Bible doctrines of the Great Awakening as preached by Whitefield and promoted in England and in the American colonies. The compiler makes no attributions of the works he is quoting, but his position as the printer of Whitefield's sermons indicates that they would be the primary source of its contents.
In 1750 Ward moved his printing and bookselling firm from the Little Britain area near Smithfield, to Cornhill, in the commercial heart of London. Imprints from 1752 show that he was appointed as the official "Bookseller to the Society for Promoting Religious Knowledge among the Poor," which gave him steady contracts for printing Bibles, catechisms, and other Christian tracts. In addition, Ward published An Antidote Against a Spreading Antinominan Principle (1750), and The Imputation of Christ's Active Obedience, by George Whitefield (1759). He was also one of the publishers of A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1754). His imprints end by 1760, and it is unknown if that is due to retirement or death.
