In a Bible of 1634 the first verse of the 14th Psalm is printed as ``The fool hath said in his heart there is God’’; and in another Bible of 1653 worldly takes the place of godly, and reads, ``In order that all the world should esteem the means of arriving at worldly riches.’’

If Field was not a knave, as hinted above, he was singularly unfortunate in his blunders; for in another of his Bibles he also omitted the negative in an important passage, and printed I Corinthians vi. 9 as, ``Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God?’’

It is recorded that a printer’s widow in Germany once tampered with the purity of the text of a Bible printed in her house, for which crime she was burned to death.  She arose in the night, when all the workmen were in bed, and going to the ``forme’’ entirely changed the meaning of a text which particularly offended her.  The text was Gen. iii. 16 (``Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee’’). p 140

This story does not rest on a very firm foundation, and as the recorder does not mention the date of the occurrence, it must be taken by the reader for what it is worth.  The following incident, vouched for by a well-known author, is, however, very similar.  James Silk Buckingham relates the following curious anecdote in his Autobiography:—­

``While working at the Clarendon Printing Office a story was current among the men, and generally believed to be authentic, to the following effect.  Some of the gay young students of the University, who loved a practical joke, had made themselves sufficiently familiar with the manner in which the types are fixed in certain formes and laid on the press, and with the mode of opening such formes for correction when required; and when the sheet containing the Marriage Service was about to be worked off, as finally corrected, they unlocked the forme, took out a single letter v, and substituted in its place the letter k, thus converting the word live into like.  The result was that, when the sheets were printed, that part p 141of the service which rendered the bond irrevocable, was so changed as to make it easily dissolved—­as the altered passage now read as follows:—­The minister asking the bridegroom, `Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy state of matrimony?  Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her in sickness and in health; and forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall like?’ To which the man shall answer, `I will.’  The same change was made in the question put to the bride.’’

If the culprits who left out a word deserved to be heavily mulcted in damages, it is difficult to calculate the liability of those who left out whole verses.  When Archbishop Ussher was hastening to preach at Paul’s Cross, he went into a shop to purchase a Bible, and on turning over the pages for his text found it was omitted.