[141] Changed in later editions, first into “To the diligent and Christian Reader. Grace, mercie, and peace, through Christ Jesus,” and then “To the Christian Reader” simply.
[142] Whittingham had previously done the same in his New Testament of 1557. In his address “To the Reader” he says: “And because the Hebrewe and Greke phrases, which are strange to rendre in other tongues, and also short, shulde not be to hard, I haue sometyme interpreted them without any whit diminishing the grace of the sense, as our lāgage doth vse them, and sometyme have put to that worde which lacking made the sentence obscure, but haue set it in such letters as may easily be discerned from the cōmun text.”
In some later editions of the Genevan Bible, printed in black letter, this clause is altered into “wee have put in the text between these two markes [ ] such worde or verbe as doth more properlie explane or manifest the text in our tongue.”
[143] To the end that.
[144] ἔξο βέλους
[145] σεισάχθειαν
[146] Circa annum 900. B. Rhenan. rerum German lib. 2.
[147] Strype, Life of Parker, b. iv. c. 20; Johnson, Historical Account, p. 87; Burnet, History of the Reformation, part ii. book iii. p. 406, ed. 1681.
[148] The Psalms were in the first instance assigned to Guest, Bishop of Rochester. It is probable that the Archbishop was dissatisfied with Guest’s work, and on good grounds, for he despatched it very quickly, and forwarded it to the Archbishop with a letter, in which he thus sets forth his estimate of his duty as a translator: “I have not altered the Translation but where it giveth occasion of an error. As in the first Psalm, at the beginning I turn the preterperfect tense into the present tense; because the tense is too hard in the preterperfect tense. Where in the New Testament one piece of a Psalm is reported, I translate it in the Psalm according to the translation thereof in the New Testament, for the avoiding of the offence that may rise to the people upon diverse translations.” (Strype, Life of Parker, b. iii. c. 6; Parker Correspondence, Parker, sec. ed. p. 250.)
[149] Parker Correspondence, Parker, sec. ed. p. 335.