The History of the Origin and First Ten Years of the British and Foreign Bible Society
A history of the Bible Society’s founding and first decade by John Owen, an Anglican clergyman who spoke at the founding meeting in 1804 and became one of its secretaries seven weeks later. He prints the circulars and resolutions and describes the meeting as a participant.
Owen was present at the meeting of 7 March 1804 and spoke at it. When the committee chose secretaries on 12 March he declined, and Josiah Pratt was appointed beside the Baptist Joseph Hughes; on 23 April Pratt resigned and Owen took his place (vol. 1, pp. 53–54, 60). For the two years before that meeting he was not himself a witness; he first heard of the plan, he says, from the circular that announced the meeting. He writes as the Society’s advocate.
It is cited in the British and Foreign Bible Society for the sequence of events from Thomas Charles’s visit to London in 1802 to the founding meeting. In the pages on Charles’s visit (vol. 1, pp. 15–17) Owen does not mention the story, told in later accounts, of a Welsh girl who walked to Bala for a Bible; that story is not used in this wiki.
Cited in
- 7 March 1804, firm date