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Vindiciae mentis. An essay of the being and nature of mind: wherein the distinction of mind and body, the substantiality, personality, and perfection of mind is asserted; and the original of our minds, their present, separate, and future states, is freely enquir’d into, in order to a more certain foundation for the knowledge of God, and our selves, and the clearing all doubts and objections that have been, or may be made concerning the life and immortality of our souls. In a new method.

London: printed for W. Walwyn, at the Three Legs in the Poultry, the corner of Old Jury, 1702.

Collation: 8vo: A⁶ B–M⁸ N² [chi]1, 97 leaves, pp. xii 180 [2], errata on last leaf, verso blank.
Condition: 185 x 110mm, Light browning to some gatherings.
Binding: Contemporary blind panelled English calf. Head and tail of spine chipped, joints starting to crack but sound, corners worn.
Provenance: Library of the Amsterdam Baptist Society church ‘bij het Lam’  with engraved booklabel ‘uit de Bibliotheek van de Doopsgezinde Gemeente bij het Lam en den Toren te Amsterdam’ and their library stamp on title. More than half this library was sold at auctions at Beyers in Utrecht in the 1970s and the Mennonite books given to Amsterdam University Library (I am grateful to Adriaan Plak and Astrid Balsem of Amsterdam University Library for this information).
References: ESTC t117131 and t 179082.
Price: £650

First (only) edition. The errata leaf is often absent. Dedicated to the Earl of Pembroke.

¶ The author sets out to counter the opinions of the ‘_Materialists_ and Mortalists’ and propose ‘the Mind, as a Distinct, Substantial, and Immortal Being.’ Emes was one of a group of millenarians known as the French Prophets, one of whom predicted that Emes would rise from the dead on 25 May 1708 and a large crowd gathered to witness the event. His failure to reappear was a severe blow to the credibility of the Prophets. Today Emes is most famous for this demonstration of his own mortality rather than this book on immortality.

A medical practitioner, Emes had been expelled from the Baptist church in Cripplegate for denying the divinity of Christ, as was his wife three years later. It is interesting therefore that this copy of his book on the distinction of the corporeal mind and immaterial and immortal soul should have been owned by the Amsterdam Baptist Society.