CANTO II.]
HUDIBRAS.
371
And therefore all your Lights and Calls
Are but apocryphal and false,
To charge us with the consequences,
Of all your native insolences, 1090
That to your own imperious wills
Laid Law and Gospel neck and heels;
Corrupted the Old Testament,
To serve the New for precedent;
T' amend its errors and defects, 1095
With murder and rebellion texts;[1]
Of which there is not any one
In all the book to sow upon;
And therefore from your tribe, the Jews
Held Christian doctrine forth, and use; 1100
As Mahomet, your chief, began
To mix them in the Alcoran;[2]
Are but apocryphal and false,
To charge us with the consequences,
Of all your native insolences, 1090
That to your own imperious wills
Laid Law and Gospel neck and heels;
Corrupted the Old Testament,
To serve the New for precedent;
T' amend its errors and defects, 1095
With murder and rebellion texts;[1]
Of which there is not any one
In all the book to sow upon;
And therefore from your tribe, the Jews
Held Christian doctrine forth, and use; 1100
As Mahomet, your chief, began
To mix them in the Alcoran;[2]
- ↑ The Presbyterians, he says, finding no countenance for their purposes in the New Testament, took their measures of obedience from some instances of rebellion in the Old. Among the corrupted texts to which Butler alludes is probably that printed at Cambridge, by Buck and Daniel, in 1638, where Acts vi. 3, reads ye instead of "we may appoint over this business," a corruption attributed by some to the Independents, by others to the Presbyterians. But several of the Bibles printed either during or immediately preceding the Commonwealth contain gross blunders. In the so-called Wicked Bible, printed by Bates and Lucas, 1632, the seventh commandment is printed, "Thou shalt commit adultery." In another Bible, printed in the Reign of Charles I., and immediately suppressed, Psalm xiv. reads, "The fool hath said in his heart, there is a God." One printed during the Commonwealth (1653) by Field, reads at Rom. vi. 13, "Neither yield ye your members as instruments of righteousness unto sin;" and at 1 Cor. vi. 9, "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God." Many other Bibles, some of much later date, present typographical errors, the most remarkable of which is perhaps that printed at Belfast, by James Blood, 1716 (the first Bible printed in Ireland), which at John viii. 11, reads sin on more, instead of "sin no more."
- ↑ In his Pindaric Ode upon an hypocritical nonconformist, Remains, vol. i. p. 135, Mr Butler says:For the Turks' patriarch, Mahomet,
Was the first great reformer, and the chief
Of th' ancient Christian belief,
That mix'd it with new light and cheat,
With revelations, dreams, and visions,
And apostolic superstitions,
To be held forth, and carry'd on by war
And his successor was a presbyter.
