ine of
Butler:--

Religion spawn'd a various rout,
Of petulant, capricious sects,
THE MAGGOTS OF CORRUPTED TEXTS.

In other Bibles by Hills and Field we may find such abundant errata,
reducing the text to nonsense or to blasphemy, making the Scriptures
contemptible to the multitude, who came to pray, and not to scoff.

It is affirmed, in the manuscript account already referred to, that one
Bible swarmed with _six thousand faults_! Indeed, from another source we
discover that "Sterne, a solid scholar, was the first who summed up the
_three thousand and six hundred_ faults that were in our printed Bibles
of London."[274] If one book can be made to contain near four thousand
errors, little ingenuity was required to reach to six thousand; but
perhaps this is the first time so remarkable an incident in the history
of literature has ever been chronicled. And that famous edition of the
Vulgate, by Pope Sixtus the Fifth, a memorable book of blunders, which
commands such high prices, ought now to fall in value, before the pearl
Bible, in twenty-fours, of Messrs. Hills and Field!

Mr. Field and his worthy coadjutor seem to have carried the favour of
the reigning powers over their opponents; for I find a piece of their
secret history. They engaged to pay 500_l._ per annum to some, "whose
names I forbear to mention," warily observes the manuscript writer; and
above 100_l._ per annum to Mr. _Marchmont Needham and his wife_, out of
the profits of the sales of their Bibles; deriding, insulting, and
triumphing over others, out of their confidence in their great friends
and purse, as if they were lawless and free, both from offence and
punishment.[275] This Marchmont Needham is sufficiently notorious, and
his secret history is probably true; for in a Mercurius Politicus of
this unprincipled Cobbett of his day, I found an elaborate puff of an
edition published by the annuity-granter to this worthy and his wife!

Not only had the Bible to suffer these indignities of size and price,
but the Prayer-book was once printed in an illegible and worn-out type;
on which the printer being complained of, he stoutly replied, that "it
was as good as the price afforded; and being a book which all persons
ought to have by heart, it was no matter whether it was read or not, so
that it was worn out in their hands." The puritans seem not to have been
so nice about the source of purity itself.

These hand-bibles of the sectarists, with their si