‘The Burning of the World’: Rare volume of Jacobean Apocalypse Sermons on Atheism, Judgment, and the Last Days. [1610]

HULL, John  Saint Peters prophesie of these last daies. Discouering the iniquity of the time, and atheism of the age. Prouing the burning of the world, manifesting the judgement to come, and confirming the resurrection of the dead &c
Imprinted at London: for Nathaniel Fosbrooke and are to be sold at his shop at the west dore of Paules, the corner shop neare to the Bishop of Londons gate, 1610

Collation (as in this copy, complete despite faults): π⁴ A–Z⁴ Aa–Hh⁴ Ii⁴ Kk⁴ Ll⁴ Mm⁴ Nn⁴ Oo⁴ Pp⁴ Qq⁴ Rr⁴ Ss⁴ Tt⁴ Uu⁴ Vv⁴ Ww⁴ Xx⁴ Yy⁴ Zz⁴ Aaa–Hhhh⁴ (final leaf pasted to blank).

[Preliminary leaves] π⁴; main text in continuous gatherings of 4 leaves throughout. Pagination irregular and discontinuous throughout (as issued), but signatures and catchwords continuous and correct.

Saint Peters prophesie of these last daies is a gripping early Jacobean apocalyptic treatise, expounding the Second Epistle of Peter as a prophetic diagnosis of moral decay, atheism, and approaching divine judgment. Published in 1610 by the eminent Puritan preacher John Hull, the work confronts what its author calls “the iniquity of the time and atheism of the age,” interpreting contemporary England through the lens of biblical eschatology.

Hull develops a sustained meditation on the corruption of the last days, the certainty of the world’s fiery destruction, the coming judgment, and the resurrection of the dead. Combining learned exegesis with urgent pastoral rhetoric, he warns that scepticism, moral licence, and religious indifference are unmistakable signs of the world’s final decline. The tone moves between doctrinal argument and prophetic exhortation, offering both terror and consolation to a society increasingly anxious about divine wrath and cosmic endings.

Issued in only two early editions (1610 and 1611), both now rare and poorly represented in institutional collections, this first edition survives in remarkably few copies. Preserved here in its original early-seventeenth-century boards, with contemporary marginal annotations testifying to engaged devotional reading, the volume is a powerful witness to the apocalyptic imagination of pre-Civil War England and a major example of Puritan eschatological preaching.

John Hull was one of the most respected English Puritan preachers and biblical expositors of the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean Church. Educated at Cambridge, where he proceeded B.D., he became a celebrated lecturer, serving notably at St Mary Woolnoth in London and later holding clerical livings in Essex. Hull belonged to the mainstream of learned Puritanism, distinguished by his combination of close scriptural scholarship and intense pastoral application.

Hull specialised in prophetic and penitential preaching, addressing themes of national sin, divine judgment, repentance, and consolation in affliction. His best-known work, Lectures upon the Lamentations of Jeremiah, later praised by C. H. Spurgeon as “marrowy throughout,” secured his reputation as one of the finest English expositors of the Old Testament.

Saint Peters prophesie of these last daies represents Hull at his most urgent and prophetic, applying eschatological doctrine to the moral crises of his own age. Though his surviving works are few, Hull stands as a major voice of early seventeenth-century English apocalyptic preaching, articulating the anxieties and hopes that would soon erupt into the religious and political upheavals of the Civil War.