Marrowy Throughout’: An Unrecorded Caroline Edition of a Classic Puritan Commentary on Jeremiah’s Lamentations. 1621

HULL, John Lectvres vpon the Lamentations of Ieremiah. First preached and now published by John Hull, B of D, for the benefit of Gods Church.
 Printed by Barnard Alsop and are to be sold by Thomas Iones at his shop in Chancery Lane, ouer against the Rowles, 1621

[8],349,[1]p collates as per the 1620 edition, lacking final blank only. Some early pages shaved close to or up to the ruled border. New best black calf, blind stamped with fleurons in a border to the front and rear boards over raised bands with red label, hand-lettered in gold leaf. This edition is unrecorded on ESTC. There was a 1618 edition which is titled An exposition whereas the 1620 edition is Lectures upon . The 1620 edition is only located at Folger, there being no other records. There is no record of a 1621 edition; the note on ESTC which mentions a title cancel is a reference to the Exposition so it is not a reference to this edition. C.H. Spurgeon does mention the 1620 Exposition so it was part of his Library and, of which he says Full of quaintnesses. Marrowy throughout.

Lectvres vpon the Lamentations of Ieremiah is a powerful and searching exposition of one of the most tragic books of the Old Testament, preached and published by the eminent Puritan divine John Hull. Interpreting Jeremiah’s laments over the destruction of Jerusalem, Hull transforms the biblical text into a sustained meditation on national sin, divine judgment, repentance, and the hope of restoration — themes of particular resonance in the troubled decades preceding the English Civil War.

Originally issued in 1618 under the title An Exposition, and reprinted in 1620 as Lectures upon, this 1621 impression represents an apparently unrecorded edition, absent from ESTC and unknown in institutional holdings. The only recorded Lectures edition (1620) survives in a single copy at the Folger Shakespeare Library; no other copies of this 1621 printing appear to be traced. The work thus stands not only as a theological landmark but as a bibliographical rarity of the first order.

Hull’s lectures are marked by vivid rhetoric, dense scriptural learning, and a profoundly pastoral tone. Lamentations becomes a mirror for England itself — a warning against complacency, a call to repentance, and a manual for enduring affliction. Long admired by later preachers, C. H. Spurgeon praised Hull’s work as “full of quaintnesses” and “marrowy throughout.”

Preserved here in a handsome modern calf binding, this copy represents a unique survival of an otherwise unrecorded Caroline edition and a major monument of early English Puritan exegesis.

John Hull was a respected English Puritan divine and biblical expositor active in the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean Church. Educated at the University of Cambridge, he proceeded B.D. and became known for his gifts as a preacher and lecturer, especially in the exposition of Scripture. He served as lecturer at St Mary Woolnoth in London and later held clerical positions in Essex.

Hull belonged to the mainstream of learned Puritan preaching, combining close textual analysis with practical and pastoral application. His lectures on Lamentations were widely admired for their doctrinal depth and emotional force, and circulated in several early editions, becoming one of the standard English treatments of the book.

Though Hull published little else, Lectures upon the Lamentations of Jeremiah secured his reputation among later generations of preachers. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who owned a copy in his famous library, singled it out for special praise as “marrowy throughout,” preserving Hull’s voice as one of the finest representatives of early seventeenth-century English practical divinity.