The Truly Blessed Man: or, The way to be happy here, and for ever: Being the substance of divers sermons preached on, Psalm XXXII

Boston: B. Green and J. Allen for Michael Perry, 1700. 652, [4]pp. 8vo. Early panelled calf, repairs to joints. Provenance: Germantown Library Company (printed label); Thomas Livezey (signatures and inscription dated 1771). 652, [4]pp. 8vo. Willard was one of the most prolific of early American authors. This collection of excerpts from Willard's sermons tackles the question of happiness as well as related problems of guilt, forgiveness, righteousness, and rejoicing: "[Undone men's] insatiable desires push them forward in quest of felicity, and their crazed and deluded understandings, which call good evil, and evil good, point them to Objects that are empty and courses that will undo them."

The present volume includes mid-eighteenth century provenance to the Germantown Library Company, founded in 1745 as the first such Pennsylvania company among non-English speaking settlers. Lamberton, Colonial Libraries of Pennsylvania notes that advertisements for the company cease around 1771, when it likely folded and the collection dispersed. Indeed, on the facing leaf to the Germantown label is a 1771 inscription by Thomas Livezny (1722-1790), owner of a grist mill on Wissahickon Creek, said to be the largest in the colonies, member of the Assembly from Philadelphia County in 1765, member of the Committee of Correspondence and Franklin correspondent. Evans 965; Wing W2298; ESTC W28221