The plate of the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts is also pictorial, and represents a ship of the Society, with its missionary, approaching the shore of savage America: this plate is dated 1704, and is very curious and interesting. The society grew from the efforts of one Rev. Thomas Bray, who established thirty-nine parochial libraries in the American Colonies for the purpose of propagating the doctrines
of the Church. In 1698, King’s Chapel, Boston, received some two hundred books from this society, which were described as “an arsenal of sound theological, ecclesiastical, and political doctrines for the Ministers of His Majesty’s Chapel.” For the prevention of loss or embezzlement, and that they might be known wherever
