[The Whole Body of Christian Religion, by Hieron Zanchius; Translated out of Latin by D. Ralph Winterton]

READER,

If thou beest merely English, it is thy great interest to welcome and embrace such labors as this is: for know, what thou art here presented with are the orient irradiations of Zanchi’s divine soul through the clear glass of an ingenuous interpreter; without whose industry this rich argosy had never arrived at our English shore. And what are the most precious commodities in foreign parts to us without the benefit of importation? I know not what reason Horace had to style translators servum pecus, as if it were a mere journey-work and nothing else. Surely, if all metaphrases might be measured by this, the employment and art of reflecting uninfranchised learning into our own dialect cannot justly come under the satirist’s expression, except it will admit the sense of (usefulness and commodity). For the author Zanchi himself, he did not only, as many do, fill up the number of modern divines, but was, and is still accounted, the very head of the chief classis, flos delibatus cleri, the very flower of the prime choice; neither is he one jot disfigured in this representation, he is the same man even here, only in an English garb. Nor had this dress now been put upon him but for their sakes who, not able to have access to the persons of great ones, are content to behold them in effigie. I will add no more, knowing that long and dark entries do rather injure than officiate to fair buildings: the gates are open, enter and entertain thyself.