This volume contains two works by Thomas Traherne and one of dubious attribution. Of the two works clearly Traherne's, A Serious and Pathetical Contemplation of the Mercies of God is the better known. First published in 1699, it went through various publications during the twentieth century, both in part and in its entirety. It is popularly referred to by the abbreviated title ‘Thanksgivings’, assigned by Bertram Dobell in the Introduction to his 1903 edition of Traherne's poems.

The Church's Year-Book has remained unpublished as an untitled manuscript book since its discovery at the beginning of the twentieth century, and this is the first printed edition of the complete manuscript. H. M. Margoliouth gave it the title ‘Church's Year-Book’ in the Introduction to his two-volume edition of Traherne's Centuries, poems, and ‘Thanksgivings’, explaining that Dobell's description of it as ‘“The Book of Private Devotions” … will doubtless persist as an alternative title, but it does not describe the scheme and purpose of the book’. ‘Church's Year-Book’ partly explains its form and something of its purpose but is not entirely satisfactory ; I have therefore added a sub-title, ‘Meditations and Devotions from the Resurrection to All Saints’ Day’.

Included in the Appendix is a work of doubtful ascription to Traherne, Meditations on the Six Days of the Creation, first published in 1717 and attributed to Susanna Hopton. The works in this volume will be discussed separately in the following sections of the Introduction.