CHAPTER SIX: Prophetic Terms Permeate Secular Literature

The molding influence of the standard writings of colonial New England had a definite hearing on the common, or popular, concept of the Papacy. The New England Primer ^{1Charles F. Adams, Three Episodes of Massachusetts History, vol. 2, pp. 778, 779.} (168?) for example, which will he noted in detail, was doubtless the most important of its class, serving for six generations as the principal text of the Dissenters in New England, and spreading into the West and South. Used for a century and a half, unnumbered thousands of copies, through many editions, were sold. Sometimes called the “Little Bible of New England,” it exercised a profound influence over the thinking of the populace. Its circulation in the one hundred and fifty years is said to have totaled literally millions of copies. ^{2Paul Leicester Ford, The New-England Primer; a History of Its Origin and Development p. 19.; Clement Ferguson, “The New England Primer, 1690.” in Magazine of American History, August, 1888 (vol. 20), pp. 148, 149.} Its significance will become apparent.PFF3 115.1