For as much as Christ saith that the gospel shall be preached in all the world, and David saith of the apostles and their preaching, "the sound of them yede out into each land, and the words of them yeden out into the ends of the world," and eft David saith, "the Lord shall tell in the scriptures of peoples, and of these princes that were in it," that is, in holy church, and as Jerome saith on that verse, "holy writ is the scripture of peoples, for it is made, that all peoples should know it," and the princes of the church, that were therein, be the apostles, that had authority to write holy writ, for by that same that the apostles wrote their scriptures by authority, and confirming of the Holy Ghost, it is holy scripture, and faith of Christian men, and this dignity hath no man after them, be he never so holy, never so cunning, as Jerome witnesseth on that verse. Also, Christ saith of the Jews that cried "Hosanna" to him in the temple, that though they were still, stones should cry, and by stones he understandeth heathen men, that worshipped stones for their gods. And we English men be come of heathen men, therefore we be understood by these stones, that should cry holy writ, and as Jews, that is interpreted knowledging, signify clerks, that should knowledge to God, by repentance of sins, and by voice of God's hearing, so our lewd men, suing the corner-stone Christ, may be signified by stones, that be hard and abiding in the foundation; for though covetous clerks be wood by simony, heresy and many other sins, and despise and stop holy writ, as much as they may, yet the lewd people crieth after holy writ, to con it, and keep it, with great cost and peril of their life. For these reasons and other, with common charity to save all men in our realm, which God would have saved, a simple creature hath translated the bible out of Latin into English. First, this simple creature had much travail, with divers fellows and helpers, to gather many old bibles, and other doctors, and common gloses, and to make one Latin bible some deal true; and then to study it of the new, the text with the glose, and other doctors, as he might get, and specially Lyra[27] on the Old Testament, that helped full much in this work; the third time to counsel with old grammarians and old divines, of hard words, and hard sentences, how they might best be understood and translated; the fourth time to translate as clearly as he could to the sentence, and to have many good fellows and cunning at the correcting of the translation. First, it is to know, that the best translating is out of Latin into English, to translate after the sentence, and not only after the words, so that the sentence be as open, either opener, in English as in Latin, and go not far from the letter; and if the letter may not be sued in the translating, let the sentence ever be whole and open, for the words owe to serve to the intent and sentence, and else the words be superfluous either false.