Thomas Traherne
Christian Ethicks.
Cornell University Press,  1968. Cornell Studies in English, Volume XLIII. First edition. General introduction and commentary by Carol L. Marks, textual introduction and text prepared by George Robert Guffey. lxii/391 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.5" x 9.5", i sbound in red cloth, with stamped silver lettering to spine and front cover. Book displays moderate shelfwear, with sunning to spine. Binding is firm. Pages are clean and bright. 
"Published in 1675, "Christian Ethicks" was ignored for some two hundred and fifty years. Interest in the book developed after the discovery of Traherne's manuscripts and the publication of their literary content (1903, 1908, 1910)...In structure and terminology "Christian Ethicks" reminds us of the persistence through the seventeenth century of medieval forms of thought, of the continued influence of in academic curricula of Aristotle and his expositors. But although the mold was Aristotle's, the metal was Plato's; Traherne was temperamentally akin not to Aristotelianism but Renaissance Neoplatonism, in particular to that version developed at Cambridge during his lifetime. His lonely analysis -- nothing like it was published in English in the thirty years after the Restoration -- really belongs to no "school," however; Traherne wished simply to draw a picture so engaging as to attract men of good will almost irresistibly. He appealed to religious and humane feelings more than to intellect. Neither a manual of behavior nor a comprehensive outline of ethics, "Christian Ethicks" in its writing required -- and it reading still requires -- resources of heart even more than of mind; it is felt thought.
The feeling remains vivid today, thanks partly to Traherne's persuasive style; the thought, though easy enough in 1675, may now need clarification. The Commentary of the present edition attempts to elucidate "Christian Ethicks" largely by means of quotations from Traherne's contemporaries, giving preference to works that we know Traherne read. When an idea was part of the intellectual atmosphere of the seventeenth century, the Commentary does not always point to the ultimate source. Commonplaces have no "source": it would falsify intellectual history to cite Aristotle in referene to statements which actually represent Aristotle transformed through centuries of commentary."