[269] It is noticed by Jortin in his Life of Erasmus, vol. i. p. 160.
THE PEARL BIBLES AND SIX THOUSAND ERRATA.
As a literary curiosity, I notice a subject which might rather enter into the history of religion. It relates to the extraordinary state of our English Bibles, which were for some time suffered to be so corrupted that no books ever yet swarmed with such innumerable errata!
These errata unquestionably were in great part voluntary commissions, passages interpolated, and meanings forged for certain purposes; sometimes to sanction the new creed of a half-hatched sect, and sometimes with an intention to destroy all scriptural authority by a confusion, or an omission of texts—the whole was left open to the option or the malignity of the editors, who, probably, like certain ingenious wine-merchants, contrived to accommodate “the waters of life” to their customers’ peculiar taste. They had also a project of printing Bibles as cheaply and in a form as contracted as they possibly could for the common people; and they proceeded till it nearly ended with having no Bible at all: and, as Fuller, in his “Mixt Contemplations on Better Times,” alluding to this circumstance, with not one of his lucky quibbles, observes, “The small price of the Bible has caused the small prizing of the Bible.”
This extraordinary attempt on the English Bible began even before Charles the First’s dethronement, and probably arose from an unusual demand for Bibles, as the sectarian fanaticism was increasing. Printing of English Bibles was an article of open trade; every one printed at the lowest price, and as fast as their presses would allow. Even those who were dignified as “his Majesty’s Printers” were among these manufacturers; for we have an account of a scandalous omission by them of the important negative in the seventh commandment! The printers were summoned before the Court of High Commission, and this not served to bind them in a fine of three thousand pounds! A prior circumstance, indeed, had occurred, which induced the government to be more vigilant on the Biblical Press. The learned Usher, one day hastening to preach at Paul’s Cross, entered the shop of one of the stationers, as booksellers were then called, and inquiring for a Bible of the London edition, when he came to look for his text, to his astonishment and horror he discovered that the verse was omitted in the Bible! This gave the first occasion of complaint to the king of the insufferable negligence and incapacity of the London press: and, says the manuscript writer of this anecdote, first bred that great contest which followed, between the University of Cambridge and the London stationers, about the right of printing Bibles.[270]
The secret bibliographical history of these times would show the extraordinary state of the press in this new trade of Bibles. The writer of a curious pamphlet exposes the combination of those called the king’s printers, with their contrivances to keep up the prices of Bibles; their correspondence with the booksellers of Scotland and Dublin, by which means they retained the privilege in their own hands: the king’s London printers got Bibles printed cheaper at Edinburgh. In 1629, when folio Bibles were wanted, the Cambridge printers sold them at ten shillings in quires; on this the Londoners set six printing-houses at work, and, to annihilate the Cambridgians, printed a similar folio Bible, but sold with it five hundred quarto Roman Bibles, and five hundred quarto English, at five shillings a book; which proved the ruin of the folio Bibles, by keeping them down under the cost price. Another competition arose among those who printed English Bibles in Holland, in duodecimo, with an English colophon, for half the price even of the lowest in London. Twelve thousand of these duodecimo Bibles, with notes, fabricated in Holland, usually by our fugitive sectarians, were seized by the king’s printers, as contrary to the statute.[271] Such was this shameful war of Bibles—folios, quartos, and duodecimos, even in the days of Charles the First. The public spirit of the rising sects was the real occasion of these increased demands for Bibles.
During the civil wars they carried on the same open trade and competition, besides the private ventures of the smuggled Bibles. A large impression of these Dutch English Bibles were burnt by order of the Assembly of Divines, for these three errors:—
Gen. xxxvi. 24.—This is that ass that found rulers in the wilderness—for mule.
Ruth iv. 13.—The Lord gave her corruption—for conception.