This is the first American edition of the Douay translation of the Vulgate Bible. The Vulgate was the 4th century Latin translation of the Bible made by St. Jerome and used throughout the Middle Ages. The Roman Catholic Church preferred the Vulgate and later vernacular translations were made from it. The Douay translation of the Vulgate was made at the English College in Douai, France. The New Testament was first published in 1582; the Old Testament in 1609. The Douay Bible is to the English-speaking Catholics what the King James Bible is to the Protestants. Carey originally advertised this Bible would appear in 48 weekly numbers. Subscribers would have the Bible personally bound once all issues were collected.

Mathew Carey (1760-1839) was a journalist in his native Ireland who at one point had to seek temporary refuge in France where he was befriended by Benjamin Franklin and the Marquis de Lafayette. About two years later he returned to Ireland and continued his journalistic career, but his attacks on the English government brought him a jail sentence of one month. After his release in 1784, at the age of 24, and still facing a libel suit, he escaped to America in disguise. With the aid of Lafayette, then in America, he established himself as a printer and publisher in Philadelphia. Carey's firm became one of the largest bookselling and printing firms and the largest and most important Bible printing house in the country. He was the first president of the American Company of booksellers, organized in 1801 in New York.

Read excerpts:

• Judea, Palestine, or the Holy Land
• Chronological Index of the Years and Times from Adam to Christ
• CHRONOLOGICAL CATALOGUE of the APOSTLES and their Successors, who founded and presided over the Five Grand Apostolical Churches
• Old Testament. and New Testament Dissected
• Address to Married Persons
• Old Testament Passages used in the New Testament
• John Fletcher’s Evidences of the Christian Religion