The calligraphic title page (written in red and black ink) for this manuscript volume reads as follows: 'A Godly Profitable collection of Divers Sentences out of Holy Scripture And variety of matter out of severall Diuine Authors: By that deare and faithfull Servant of God John Bruen Who dyed Wednesday January ye 18th 1625 Com[m]only by him Called his Cardes being 52 in Number'.
Quarto.
The Harleian Library was founded by Robert Harley, First Earl of Oxford (1661–1724). According to Cyril Ernest Wright, Robert Harley ‘was primarily interested in English historical and political material and in volumes of sermons and theological controversy, sharing in the latter the taste of his Harley ancestors’. See Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani (London, 1972), p. xxxiv.
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts, in the British Museum (1808), Vol. III, p. 379; Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani (London, 1972); Hannah Yip.
This manuscript is cited in Arnold Hunt, The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and Their Audiences, 1590–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Alec Ryrie, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).