Early Bibles of America; Being a Descriptive Account of Bibles Published in the United States, Mexico and Canada (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE AITKEN BIBLE. The story of the effort to publish the Bible in English in America is a record through long years of well-laid plans, earnest appeals, many disappointments, deferred hopes, and final success. The man who was the leader in this movement was Cotton Mather. He spent fifteen years in the preparation of his " Biblia Americana." In 1710 he announced its completion and urged its publication. Had it seen the light of day in printed form, it would have filled with its numerous notes and comments two folio volumes. But in those early days of narrow resources no publisher was willing to undertake the work. In 1713 Mr. Mather issued a second prospectus, which was distributed largely in London with the hope that assistance might be had from English printers, but this was attended only with failure and disappointment. A third and last effort to get Mr. Mather's work into print was made in 1728, but with the same lack of success. The manuscript of the " Biblia Americana " is in the archives of the Historical Society of Massachusetts, where it remains as evidence of fifteen years of fruitless labor. Mr. Mather rejoiced at the publication of Eliot's Indian Bible, and his heart would have been gladdened by seeing an English Bible from an American press, but he died without the sight. The dream of his life was never realized, and that, too, after patient labor and years of waiting. The next effort to print a Bible in English came from John Fleming, a Scotchman by birth and a resident of Boston. He was a printer by trade, and seems at the beginning to have had strong hopes of accomplishing his object. What his publication might have been can be judged from the prospectus which was issued in 17 70. Here are its words: . The first Bible ever printed in America. Proposals for...