Heretical translation against the honour of SAINTS, namely of our B. LADY

1 LET us pass from God’s holy Sacraments to his honorable Saints in heaven, and we shall find that these translations pluck from them also as much honour as they may. In the Psalm 138 where the Catholic Church & all antiquity reads thus,¹ Nimis honorati sunt amici tui Deus &c. Thy friends O God are become exceeding honorable, their princedom is exceedingly strengthened: which verse is sung and said in the honour of the holy Apostles, agreeably to that in another Psalm,² Constitues eos principes super omnem terram, Thou shalt appoint them Princes over all the earth: what mean they in all their English Bibles to alter it thus: How dear are thy counsels (or thoughts) to me O God: O how great is the sum of them? Does not the Hebrew make more for the old received Latin translation,³ than for theirs, because the Hebrew word is used more commonly for to signify friends than cogitations? Does not S. Jerome so translate in his translation of the Psalms according to the Hebrew? Does not the great Rabbin R. Solomon? Does not the Greek put it out of doubt,⁴ which is altogether according to the said ancient Latin translation?

2 And you my Masters that translate otherwise,⁵ I beseech you, is it in Hebrew, How great is the sum of them & not rather word for word most plainly, how are the heads of them strengthened, or their princedoms, as in the Greek also it is most manifest?⁶ Why do you then hunt after novelties, and forsake the trodden path of the ancient, and pass the bounds which our holy forefathers have set and appointed, preferring your own singularities and new devises even there where you can not justly pretend either the Hebrew or Greek?⁷ When the Hebrew Lexicon has given the common interpretation of this place, and then says, Quidam exponunt, Some expound it otherwise: why had you rather be of that lesser, some that expound otherwise, than of the great society of all ancient interpreters?

3 But this new fangled singularity of teaching and translating otherwise than all antiquity has done, shall better appear in their dealing about our B. Lady, whose honour they have sought so many ways to diminish & deface, that the defense and maintenance thereof against the Heretics of our time is grown to a great book learnedly written by the great Clerk and Jesuit, father Canisius, entitled, Mariana.

4 Concerning our purpose, what was ever more common, and is now more general and usual in all Christian Countries, than in the Ave Mary to say. Gratia plena, full of grace, in so much that in the first English Bible it has continued so still, and every child in our Country was taught so to say, till the Ave Mary was banished altogether and not suffered to be said neither in Latin nor English? What ancient father of the Latin Church has not always so read and expounded? What Church in all the west has not ever so sung and said? Only our new Translators have found a new kind of speech, translating thus: Hail thou that art freely beloved. ⁸ and, Hail thou that art in high favour. Why this, and that, or any other thing, rather than, Hail full of grace? S. John Baptist was full of the Holy Ghost even from his birth,⁹ S. Stephen was full of grace,¹⁰ as the Scripture records of them both: why may not then our Lady much more be called full of grace,¹¹ who (as S. Ambrose says) only obtained the grace, which no other women deserved, to be replenished with the author of grace?

5 They will say, the Greek word does not so signify. Does it not? I make themselves witnesses of the contrary, and their own translation in other places shall confute them, where they translate another word of the self same nature and form and in all respects like to this,¹² full of sores. If ἡλκωμένος be full of sores, why is not κεχαριτωμένη full of grace? Let any Grecian of them all make me a difference in the nature and significancy of these two words. Again if vlcerosus (as Beza translates) be full of sores, why is not gratiosa (as Erasmus translates) full of grace? or why does Beza marvel that Erasmus translated, gratiosa, when himself translates the like word, vlcerosus. All which adjectives in osus (you know) signify fulness, as, periculosus, aerumnosus. [full of danger, full of hardship] Yet what a stir does Beza keep here in his Annotations to make the Greek word signify, freely beloved?

6 But has it indeed any such signification? Tell us you that profess this great skill of the tongues,¹³ what syllable is there in this word that sounds to that signification?¹⁴ S. Chrysostom and the Greek Doctors that should best know the nature of this Greek word, say that it signifies, to make gracious, & acceptable, and beloved, and beautiful, and amiable, and so to be desired as when the Psalm says,¹⁵ The king shall desire thy beauty. Beza himself says, that it is word for word, gratificata, made grateful, and yet he expounds it, accepted before God, and translates it, freely beloved, because he will have no singular grace or goodness or virtue resident in our B. Lady, but all by imputation & acceptation, whereof I have spoken before.¹⁶ S. Athanasius a Greek Doctor says that she had this title κεχαριτωμένη, because the Holy Ghost descended into the Virgin, filling her with all graces and virtues. And I beseech the reader to see his words, which are many moe concerning this fulness of grace and all spiritual gifts. S. Jerome that knew the Greek word as well as the Protestants,¹⁷ reads, Gratia plena, and finds no fault with this interpretation. But says plainly she was so saluted, full of grace, because she conceived him in whom all fulness of the deity dwelt corporally.

7 Now let the English Bezites come with their new term, freely beloved, and control these and all other ancient fathers both Greek and Latin, and teach them a new signification of the Greek word, which they knew not before.¹⁸ Let John Keltridge one of their great preachers in London, come and tell us, that the Septuaginta and the best translations in Greek have no such words as we use in the Ave Mary, but that the word which the Septuaginta use, is κεχαριτωμένη &c.¹⁹ Who ever heard such a jest, that the preacher of the word of God in London (so he is called in the title of his book) and preacher before the Jesuits and Seminaries in the tower,²⁰ which is next degree to the disputers there, whose sermons be solemnly printed, and dedicated to one of the Queen’s Council, who seems to be such a Grecian that he confutes the vulgar Latin translation by the signification of the Greek word, and in other places of his book alleges the Greek text:²¹ that this man for all this, refers us to the Septuaginta either as authors of S. Luke’s Gospel which is too ridiculous: or as translators thereof, as though S. Luke had written in Hebrew, yea as though the whole New Testament had been written in Hebrew (for so no doubt he presupposed) and that the Septuaginta had translated it into Greek as they did the old, who were dead three hundred years before S. Luke’s Gospel and the New Testament was written.

8 All this is such a pitiful jest, as were incredible, if his printed book did not give testimony. Pitiful I say, because the simple people count such their preachers jolly fellows & great Clerks, because they can talk of the Greek & of the Hebrew text, as this man does also concerning the Hebrew letter Tau, ²² whether it had in old time the form of a cross or no, even as wisely and as skilfully, as he did before of the Septuaginta and the Greek word in S. Luke’s Gospel. Whose incredible folly and ignorance in the tongues perhaps I would never have mentioned (because I think the rest are sorry and ashamed of him) but that he boasts of that whereof he has no skill, and that the people may take him for a very pattern and example of many other like boasters and braggers among them, and that when they hear one talk lustily of the Hebrew and Greek, and cite the text in the said tongues, they may always remember John Keltridge their preacher, and say to themselves, what if this fellow also be like John Keltridge?

9 But to proceed: these great Grecians and Hebricians that control all antiquity and the approved ancient Latin translation by scanning the Greek & Hebrew words, that think it a great corruption Gen. 3. to read, Ipsa conteret caput tuum, she shall bruise thy head, because it pertains to our Lady’s honour, calling it ²³ a corruption of the Popish Church, whereas S. Ambrose, S. Augustine, S. Gregory, S. Bernard, & the rest read so, as being the common received text in their time (though there has been also always the other reading even in the vulgar Latin translation, & therefore it is not any late reformation of these new correctors, as though the Hebrew and Greek text before had been unknown) these controllers I say of the Latin text by the Hebrew, against our Lady’s honour, are in another place content to dissemble the Hebrew word, and that also for small devotion to the B. Virgin: namely Hierem 7 and 44. Where the Prophet inveighs against them that offer sacrifice to the Queen of heaven. this they think is very well, because it may sound in the people’s ears against the use of the Catholic Church, which calls our Lady, Queen of heaven. but they know very well that the Hebrew word does not signify, Queen in any other place of the Scripture, and that the Rabbines and later Hebricians (whom they gladly follow) deduce it otherwise, to signify rather the whole corps [body, whole frame] and frame of heaven, consisting of all the beautiful stars and planets, and the Septuaginta call it not only βασίλισσαν,²⁴ Queen, but τὴν στρατιάν, the host of heaven, ²⁵ c. 7. Hierem: and S. Jerome not only, reginam, but rather, militiam coeli: & when he names it reginam, Queen, he says we must understand it of the moon, to which and to the other stars they did sacrifice and commit idolatry. But the Protestants (against their custom of scanning the Hebrew and the Greek) translate here, Queen of heaven, for no other cause in the world, but to make it sound against her, whom Catholics truly call and worthily honour as Queen of heaven, because her son is king, and she exalted above Angels and all other creatures. See the New Test. Annot. Act. 1. v. 14.

10 Again,²⁶ why does the Geneva New Testament make S. Matthew to say,²⁷ that He (to wit, Joseph) called his name Jesus? Why not she,²⁸ as well as he? For in S. Luke the Angel says to our Lady also, Thou shalt call his name Jesus. S. Matthew then speaking indifferently, and not limiting it to him or her, why do they give this preeminence to Joseph rather than to the B. Virgin? Did not both Zachary and also Elisabeth his wife by revelation give the name of John to John the Baptist?²⁹ yea did not Elisabeth the mother first so name him, before Zachary her husband? Much more may we think that the B. Virgin the natural mother of our Saviour, gave him the name of Jesus, then Joseph his putative [supposed, reputed] father, specially if we consider that the Angel revealed the name first unto her, saying, that she should so call him: and the Hebrew word Esa. 7. whereunto the Angel alludes, is the feminine gender, and referred by the great Rabbines, Rabbi Abraham and Rabbi David, unto her, saying expressly in their commentaries, Et vocabit ipsa puella: and the maid herself shall call. and surely the usual pointing of the Greek text (for Beza makes other points of his own) is much more for that purpose. Now if they will say that Theophylact understands it of Joseph, true it is, and so it may be understood very well: but if it may be understood of our Lady also, and rather of her than of him, why does your translation exclude this other interpretation?

11 Where, by the way I must tell you (and elsewhere perhaps more at large) that it is your common fault to make some one doctor’s interpretation, the text of your translation, and so to exclude all the rest that expound it otherwise, which you know is such a fault in a translator as can by no means be excused. Secondly the reader may here observe and learn, that if they shall hereafter defend their translation of any place, by some doctors exposition agreeable thereunto, that will not serve nor suffice them, because every Doctor may say his opinion in his commentaries, ³⁰ but that must not be made the text of Scripture, because other doctors expound it otherwise: and being in itself and in the original tongue ambiguous and indifferent to divers senses, it may not be restrained or limited by translation, unless there be a mere necessity, when the translation can not possibly or hardly express the ambiguity and indifference of the original text.

12 As (for example) in this controversy concerning Saints,³¹ S. Peter speaks so ambiguously, either that he will remember them after his death, or they shall remember him, that some of the Greek fathers gathered and concluded thereupon (Oecum. in Caten. Gagneius in hunc locum) that the Saints in heaven remember us on earth,³² and make intercession for us. Which ambiguity both in the Greek and the Latin, should be also kept and expressed in the English translation, and we have endeavoured as near as we could possibly so to make it, because of the divers interpretations of the ancient fathers. But it may seem perhaps to the reader that the said ambiguity can not be kept in our English tongue, and that our own translation also can have but one sense. If it be so, and if there be a necessity of one sense, then (as I said) the translator in that respect is excused. But let the good reader consider also, that the Calvinists in restraining the sense of this place, follow not necessity, but their heresy, That Saints pray not for us.³³ Which is evident by this, that they restrain it in their Latin translations also, where there is no necessity at all, but it might be as ambiguous & indifferent, as in Greek,³⁴ if it pleased them: yea when they print the Greek Testament only without any translation, yet here they put the Latin in the margin, according as they will have it read, and as though it might be read no otherwise than they prescribe.