2. Q. Until politics began to interest the colonists in a vital manner, what formed the bulk of the issues of the press? A. Religious books and tracts.
3. Q. What was the first book written and printed in New England? A. The Bay Psalm Book.
4. Q. Of all the theological writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who were the most voluminous? A. Increase Mather and his son Cotton. The publications of the former numbered eighty-five, and of the latter no less than three hundred and eighty-two.
5. Q. What is the chief monument of the industry and scholarship of John Eliot, the “Apostle to the Indians?” A. His translation of the entire Bible into the Indian tongue. This appeared in two parts, the New Testament in 1661, and the whole Bible in 1663, and was the labor of the unaided Eliot.
6. Q. What are the names of three minor writers of the seventeenth century? A. Capt. John Smith, Gov. John Winthrop, and Michael Wigglesworth.
7. Q. Upon what work does the reputation of Jonathan Edwards as philosopher and theologian chiefly rest? A. His great treatise on the “Freedom of the Will,” written about the middle of the eighteenth century.
8. Q. Who were the principal leaders in the eighteenth century of the school of philosophy which Edwards shaped? A. Samuel Hopkins, Nathaniel Emmons and Timothy Dwight.
9. Q. What is one of the most remarkable of the names of great Americans in the eighteenth century? A. Benjamin Franklin, who was a master in whatever branch of learning he touched.
10. Q. What is one of the best known of Franklin’s works? A. Poor Richard’s Almanac.
11. Q. What are the names of three minor writers of the eighteenth century? A. William Stith, David Brainerd and John Woolman.