pene ab ipsis incunabulis, &c., detriti sumus; Both we have learned the Hebrew tongue in part, and in the Latin we have been exercised almost from our very cradle._ St. _Hierome_ maketh no mention of the _Greek_ tongue, wherein yet he did excel; because he translated not the Old Testament out of _Greek_, but out of _Hebrew_. And in what sort did these assemble? In the trust of their own knowledge, or of their sharpness of wit, or deepness of judgment, as it were in an arm of flesh? At no hand. They trusted in him that hath the key of _David_, opening, and no man shutting; they prayed to the Lord, the Father of our Lord, to the effect that St. _Augustine_ did: [Sidenote: _St. August. lib. 11. Confess. cap. 2._] _O let thy Scriptures be my pure delight; let me not be deceived in them, neither let me deceive by them_. In this confidence, and with this devotion, did they assemble together; not too many, lest one should trouble another; and yet many, lest many things haply might escape them. If you ask what they had before them; truly it was the _Hebrew_ text of the Old Testament, the _Greek_ of the New. These are the two golden pipes, or rather conduits, wherethrough the olivebranches empty themselves into the gold. [Sidenote: _St. Aug. 3. De doctr. cap. 3., &c. St. Hieron. ad Suniam et Fretel. St. Hieron. ad Lucinium, Dist 9._ Ut veterum.] St. _Augustine_ calleth them precedent, or original, tongues; St. _Hierome_, fountains. The same St. _Hierome_ affirmeth, and _Gratian_ hath not spared to put it into his decree, That _as the credit of the old books_ (he meaneth of the Old Testament) _is to be tried by the Hebrew volumes; so of the new by the Greek tongue_, he meaneth by the original _Greek_. If truth be to be tried by these tongues, then whence should a translation be made, but out of them? These tongues therefore (the Scriptures, we say, in those tongues) we set before us to translate, being the tongues wherein God was pleased to speak to his Church by his Prophets and Apostles. [Sidenote: _Joseph. Antiq. lib. 12._] Neither did we run over the work with that posting haste that the _Septuagint_ did, if that be true which is reported of them, that they finished it in seventy-two days; neither were we barred or hindered from going over it again, having once done it, like St. _Hierome_, [Sidenote: _St. Hieron. ad Pammach. pro lib. advers. Jovinian._ πρωτόπειροι.] if that be true which himself reporteth, that he could no sooner write anything, but presently it was caught from him, and published, and he could not have leave to mend it; neither, to be short, were we the first that fell in hand with translating the Scripture into _English_, and consequently destitute of former helps, as it is written of _Origen_, that he was the first in a manner, that put his hand to write commentaries upon the Scriptures, and therefore no marvel if he overshot himself many times. None of these things: The work hath not been huddled