THE TRANSLATORS TO THE READER
Translation out of Hebrew and Greek into Latin
There were also, within a few hundred years after Christ, translations many into the Latin tongue; for this tongue also was very fit to convey the law and the gospel by, because in those times very many countries of the West, yea of the South, East and North, spake or understood Latin, being made provinces to the Romans. But now the Latin translations were too many to be all good, for they were infinite (Latini interpretes nullo modo numerari possunt, saith St. Augustine) [S. Augustin. de doctr. Christ. lib. 2 cap. 11]. Again they were not out of the Hebrew fountain (we speak of the Latin translations of the Old Testament) but out of the Greek stream; therefore, the Greek being not altogether clear, the Latin derived from it must needs be muddy. This moved St. Jerome — a most learned father, and the best linguist without controversy of his age or of any that went before him — to undertake the translating of the Old Testament, out of the very fountains themselves; which he performed with that evidence of great learning, judgment, industry, and faithfulness, that he hath forever bound the church unto him in a debt of special remembrance and thankfulness.