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Trying to reconcile the reigning orthodoxy and Covenant Theology: an influential work

WITSIUS, Hermannus.
De oeconomia foederum Dei cum hominibus, libri quattor.

Woodcut printer's device on title, title printed in in red & black, engraved folding portrait of Witsius (315 x 213 mm), engraved by J. Hagenaer after a painting by J. Heymans and with a laudatory poem by Ulricus Huber underneath.

Leeuwarden, Eelcke Symons Nauta Symons for Jacob Hagenaar, 1677. 4to. Early 18th-century beautiful binding: calf, spine gilt in compartments with black title label lettered in gold, elaborately gilt tooled sides with fine borders and scrolled stamps, centre-piece, and corner-pieces with paired spirals and scrolls, gilt and gauffered edges. Woodcut printer's device on title, title printed in in red & black, engraved folding portrait of Witsius (315 x 213 mm), engraved by J. Hagenaer after a painting by J. Heymans and with a laudatory poem by Ulricus Huber underneath. (16), 700, (20) pp.

First edition of the main and very influential theologian work, The economy of the covenants between God and Man, in four books, by Hermannus Witsius or Herman Wits (1636-1708) in an elaborately decorated binding.
Hermann Witsius was born at Enkhuizen, North Holland, and studied at Groningen, Leiden and Utrecht. He was ordained in the ministry, becoming the pastor of Westwoud in 1656 and afterwards at Wormeren, Goes, and Leeuwarden, and became professor of divinity successively at the University of Franeker in 1675 and then at the University of Utrecht in 1680. In 1698 he was appointed to the University of Leiden (as the successor of the younger Friedrich Spanheim), where he died.
While in his theology Witsius aimed at a reconciliation between the reigning orthodoxy and Covenant Theology (also known as federalism), he was first of all a Biblical theologian, his principal field being systematic theology. He endeavors this in his present work De oeconomia foderum Dei cum hominibus. He was induced to publish this work by his grief at the controversies between Voetians and Cocceians. Although himself a member of the federalistic school, he was in no way blind to the value of the scholastically established dogmatic system of the Church. In the end, he did not succeed in pleasing either party.
The name of Herman Wits has been unjustly forgotten. He was, apart from a masterful Dutch Reformed theologian, learned, wise, mighty in the Scriptures, practical and 'experimental' (to use the Puritan label for that which furthers heart-religion). On paper he was calm, judicious, systematic, clear and free from personal oddities and animosities. He was a man whose work stands comparison for substance and thrust with that of his younger British contemporary John Owen. To Witsius it was given in this treatise to integrate and adjudicate explorations of covenant theology carried out by a long line of theological giants stretching back over more than century and a half to the earliest days of the Reformation. On this major matter Witsius's work has landmark status as summing up a whole era. Covenant theology in fact is what is nowadays called a hermeneutic - that is, a way of reading the whole Bible that is itself part of the overall interpretation of the Bible that it undergirds. A successful hermeneutic is a consistent interpretative procedure yielding a consistent understanding of Scripture in turn confirms the propriety of the procedure itself.
A second edition appeared in 1685 with the same publisher, a third edition in Utrecht in 1694. A Dutch translation by Martinus van Harlingen was published in Utrecht in 1686 (and 1697, 1707, etc); an English translation in 1762 by William Crookshank.

Good copy in a beautiful binding with ownership's entry of Joannis Fiddes on first fly-leaf.- (Hinges partly broken; spine damaged; tear in folding plate; some foxing and staining).

NNBW III, cols. 1445-8; the introduction by J. I. Packer to the reprint of the English translation of Witsius's The Economy of the Covenants between God and Man: Comprehending A Complete Body of Divinity" (Escondido. California, 1990).

Related Subjects: Bindings Protestantism Reformation Religion Theology

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