Did The Westminster divines believe in a perfect printing?

The Westminster divines worked with multiple Bible versions available in their era, reflecting the diversity of translations that had emerged by the mid-seventeenth century.

Versions Available to the Divines

The Reformation and printing press stimulated production of numerous English versions during the sixteenth century, including Tyndale’s New Testament and portions of the Old Testament (1525–1535), Miles Coverdale’s complete English Bible (1535), Matthew’s Bible (1537), the Great Bible (1539), the Geneva Bible (1560), and the Bishops’ Bible (1568)[1]. Additionally, the Roman Catholic Church produced the Douai-Reims Bible, with the Old Testament translated at Douai (1609–1610) and the New Testament at Reims (1582), both from the Vulgate[2]. The King James Version itself appeared in 1611, roughly three decades before the Assembly convened (1643–1649).

When the KJV was produced, the fifty-some scholars were instructed to use the Bishops’ Bible of 1568 as their foundation while consulting all earlier English versions, including the Catholic Douai version and the Geneva Bible favored by the Puritans[3]. This methodological pluralism—drawing from multiple textual witnesses—characterized scholarly Bible work of the period.

Did They Believe in a Perfect Printing?

No. The Westminster divines explicitly rejected the notion of textual perfection in any printed edition. The Confession distinguishes between the autographic (original) text, which was “immediately inspired by God,” and subsequent transmission in copies, over which God exercised providential care rather than continued inspiration, with the effect that they retained authority despite imperfection in transmission. This distinction was intentional, proven by the controversies the framers actively engaged in[4].

The Westminster Divines affirmed providential preservation of the inspired Scriptures in purity in the originals, and the adequate purity of the Word of God in translations[4]—a careful formulation distinguishing between original inspiration and translated adequacy. They were defending Scripture’s reliability against Roman Catholic claims that textual corruption necessitated ecclesiastical authority, not claiming any printing achieved perfection.

[1] J. R. Dummelow, ed., A Commentary on the Holy Bible (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1936), xvi.
[2] George Thomas Kurian, in Nelson’s New Christian Dictionary: The Authoritative Resource on the Christian World (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2001). [See here.]
[3] William S. Barker, Puritan Profiles: 54 Influential Puritans at the Time When the Westminster Confession of Faith Was Written (Fearn, Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus Publications, 1996), 62.
[4] Benjamin B. Warfield, The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield: The Westminster Assembly and Its Work (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2008), 237.