Page:Historical and biographical sketches.djvu/173

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DER BLUTIGE SCHAU-PLATZ.
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but would take care that it should be of a neat print and a good paper and at their own cost, if we would promise to buy the copies and have none printed or brought here from any other place. Thereupon the elders and ministers of those communities of the Tauffs-gesinneten, which are called Mennonites, (to which communities the said book is best adapted), went to Ephrata and made there with their said friends an agreement that they, the said Taufs-gesinneten, would buy the said books at a reasonable price, and would not give orders elsewhere, provided they should receive assurance of good work, paper and translation, but if the print should not turn out well they should be released. Heinrich Funk and Dielman Kolb had such a great love for this book that they both with common consent gave their time and labor to it, and, as the leaves came from the press and were sent to them in their order, went over them one at a time, comparing them with the Dutch, and in this work have not omitted a single verse. They have not found in the whole book one line which does not give the same grounds of belief and sense as is contained in the Dutch. They have indeed found a number of words about which they have hesitated and doubted, and which might have been improved both in the Dutch and German, but it is not to be wondered at that in so large a book a word here and there is not used in the best sense; but nobody ought to complain for this reason, for we are all human and often err. Concerning the Errata placed before the Register, it has been found that many that were in the Dutch edition have been corrected, though not all, and some have been found in the German, although, as has been said, they are not numerous. We have, therefore, at the request of the rest of our fellow ministers, very willingly read through this great book from the beginning to the end, and compared it with the Dutch, and we have

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