Translator's Preface

The chief object in writing this preface is to point out the main difficulties I had to contend with while engaged in this truly laborious and exhausting task. I do this not to win sympathy for myself, but to give the reader a fair idea of how perplexing this work is — work that has held my closest attention and absorbed so much of my energy and care for nearly three years. The reader will then be prepared to look with greater leniency on the unavoidable inconsistencies and other imperfections his critical eye may discover.

First of all, I will state that the original is written in a language that has now been obsolete for many years, which proved a very great obstacle, since no dictionary I could obtain always gave the information I wanted. So the meaning of many words and phrases had to be settled by long and laborious research and comparison, which unavoidably did not always rule out the possibility of an error, though I have taken great pains to give as correct a rendering as possible.

Another feature of the original that often proved very trying is that it consists in great part of letters written by comparatively illiterate people. Because of this the language used is very often ambiguous or obscure, and it took an incalculable amount of weighing and comparing, without any certainty that I had grasped the writer's true meaning.

Still another perplexing obstacle was this: many proper names occur in the work that are foreign to the language of the original, and they appear to have been copied down incorrectly, so it was not always possible to determine the exact spelling of such names — which, though desirable, is, however, of no material consequence.

But the greatest and most harassing difficulty of all was the fact that the version of the Bible used by the various authors of the work differed in many points, and sometimes in very essential ones, from our English translation. This made it an utter impossibility to adopt an inflexible rule without involving oneself in countless errors and misreadings. The course I generally followed was this: when the rendering of the passage, or passages, given or used in the original almost agreed with our English Bible, or at least did not differ from it materially, I took the quotation in question word for word from the English; but when the discrepancy was too great, or an argument depended on the exact rendering, I translated the phrase or passage to be quoted literally from the original. So the reader will see that this made it absolutely impossible to hold to one invariable rule; and if he only knew how much careful thought and anxiety went into drawing the line — when to quote from the English version and when to translate literally — he could not help but sympathize heartily with the translator, and kindly overlook any shortcomings he may discover.

As for the marginal notes or remarks, I would state that I have always translated them when they contained anything needed for a full understanding of the subject under consideration; but often they are simply a summary of a paragraph, or a side remark of the compiler, with no information or value for the reader, and in that case I have left them out.

These are the chief points I would have the reader consider, for by keeping them in mind he will be able to judge intelligently, and also charitably, of the way the translator has done his task. To claim that this translation contains no errors would be simply preposterous, when all the circumstances are taken into account; but I can truthfully say that I have conscientiously striven to give the reader as correct a translation as it was in my power to give. How I have succeeded I leave to the reader to judge. Trusting that the contemplation of the faith, the self-sacrificing zeal, and the religious fervor of these martyrs of former ages will leave its imprint for good upon the hearts of those who shall read this book, I now place it in the hands of the printer.