John Dury (1596 - 1680) was the son of a Puritan minister who was raised in Holland. He was instrumental in the Puritan Revolution in England. Dury wanted to reform the intellectual institutions so that the prophecies in the books of Revelation and Daniel could come true. Dury worked along with Samuel Hartlib and Johann Amos Comenius. The introduction to The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650) states that, "The three of them shared a common vision--that the advancement of knowledge, the purification of the Christian churches, and the impending conversion of the Jews were all antecedent steps to the commencement in the foreseeable future of the millennium, the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth. They saw the struggles of the Thirty Years' War and the religious conflict in England as part of their development of providential history." --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.