Authentic memoirs of the Christian Church in China. Edited, with an introduction and notes, by Richard Gibbing.

Dublin: printed at the University Press, 1862. Second English edition, the first with Gibbing's introduction and notes, 8vo (23 x 14.5 cm), pp.[iv], 111, [1, advertisements]. A very good copy in contemporary embossed cloth, gilt title on spine. Largely unopened. Light rubbing to boards, corners slightly bumped. Scattered foxing. An important tract on Christianity in China compiled by the Lutheran theologian Johann Lorenz von Mosheim (1693-1755) with a fifty-page introduction by Richard Gibbing and his extensive notes. This text was first published in German as Erzählung der neuesten Chinesischen Kirchengeschichte (1748), both separately and as an addition to the first German edition of Du Halde. An English translation was published in 1750 but, according to this editor's introduction, was 'so scarce that its existence is almost unknown'. Von Mosheim provides a historical sketch of Christianity in China and a detailed Protestant analysis of the Catholic missions and the Chinese rites controversy. Gibbing published this edition in response to the increasing interest in English missionaries in China. Cordier BS 766-7; Morrison I, p.542. COPAC records only 5 copies: Trinity, Cambridge, Oxford, Lambeth Palace, National Library of Scotland. Not in BL.