Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/475

Rh legal defect. But the hope was confidently expressed that the King would renew it. The Commissioners therefore availed themselves of the fact that Eliot's translation of the New Testament was about to issue from the press in Cambridge, Mass., to improve it to a good purpose. The volume appeared Sept. 5, 1661. The title is, “Wusku Wuttestamentum Nul-Lordumun Jesus Christ Nuppoquohwussuacneumun.” The Commissioners had a dedication prepared and printed in several copies, offering the strange work, with their homage, to Charles II., as appearing in the first year of his reign, and making it the appropriate medium of their petition that he would be graciously pleased to re-establish and confirm the defunct Corporation. The next year brought them the grateful tidings that his Majesty had renewed the charter under a prestige which drew in the patronage of “many of the nobility and other persons of quality.” The materials for the expensive work of printing, and Mr. Marmaduke Johnson, as overseer, had all been furnished by the Society. The Old Testament, having been three years in the press, engaging the constant pains of Eliot and his assistants, was published in 1663. It was bound up with the New Testament, with a Catechism, and a translation in metre of the Psalms. The copy that was sent to the King was elegantly bound, as were also a few others in London. These were furnished with a somewhat fulsome dedication, though the donors might well find pride and satisfaction in their offering. In inscribing the New Testament to their sovereign, they had expressed their “weak apprehensions” that his Majesty had “a greater interest in this work than we believe is generally understood.” In dedicating to him “the whole Bible” in the language of the natives of New England, they recognize his favor in the reincorporation of the Society, and congratulate him as being the first European sovereign that ever received such a work, with such “a superlative lustre” upon it, from his subjects. There were a thousand copies of this edition.