s well as you know,
that kings and queens are often vicious, profligate, and godless. They
knew that among the kings and queens of England there had been some of
the most loathsome lumps of filthiness--some of the most adulterous
and lecherous sensualists--some of the most heartless and cruel
tyrants--some of the most inhuman and bloody wretches that ever cursed
the earth. They knew, too, that English kings and queens generally were
under strong temptations to be thus cruel and profligate, and that
it was too much to expect any of them to be strictly religious and
virtuous. Yet they bound themselves on oath to call their kings
and queens, whatever their characters might be, most gracious and
religious.' They _did_ call the monarch then living, 'most gracious and
religious,' and they handed it down as a duty to their successors to
give the same high titles to all their future monarchs, though they
should be as filthy as that unwieldy, waddling mass of lust and
rottenness, King Henry the Eighth, or at false and treacherous as the
perjured Charles the First. These translators of the Bible also knew
that many who were brought to them to be buried were godless,
wicked men. They knew that some of them were drunkards, adulterers,
false-swearers. Yet they bound themselves to call them all, as they
lowered them into their graves, their 'beloved brethren,' and to declare
that they committed them to the dust 'in sure and curtain hope of a
resurrection to eternal life,' though they believed in their hearts that
they would rise to eternal damnation.... They were the hirelings of the
king and government. They regarded the king as the head of the church,
and were sworn to obey him in all things. They were sworn to obey him in
translating the Bible. The king gave them the rules by which they were
to be guided in the work of translation, and they were sworn to follow
these rules. These rules were intended to prevent them from putting
anything into their translation of the Bible that was at variance with
the established priesthoods, and to keep them from leaving out anything
that was favorable to the Established Church and government. And they
_kept_ to their rules, and they were influenced by their interests,
their situation, and their prejudices. It would be foolish to think
otherwise. To make the Bible agree with their creed, they put into their
translation things which were not in the Greek or Hebrew Bibles, and
mistranslated vast mul