TO THE RIGHT HOnourable, right virtuous, and most truly religious Lord, ROBERT, Lord RICHE, Baron of Leeze, &c. Grace and peace.

The holy Scriptures (Right Honorable) given by divine inspiration, and penned by the holy men of God, Prophets, Apostles, and Apostolic writers, not by private motion, but as they were guided by the Holy Ghost, are not only commended by God, and left to the Church as a precious depositum carefully to be kept in their integrity (for which cause the Church is called the ground and pillar of truth, 1 Timothy 3:15), nor to be defended only by the sword of the Magistrate, against Heretics, Schismatics, and men of scandalous life, in which respect he is called (and that truly) Custos utriusque tabulae: but also to be the pillar and foundation whereon to rest our faith; the touchstone of truth; the shop of remedies for all spiritual maladies; an anchor in the blasts of temptation, and waves of affliction; a two-edged sword to foil and put to flight our spiritual enemies; the only Oracle to which we must have recourse, and where we are to inquire the will of God: in a word, the bread and water of life, whereon our souls are to feed to eternal life. Therefore we are commanded to search the Scriptures as for silver, and to seek in them as for treasures, to read in them continually, to meditate on them day and night, to use them as bracelets upon our arms, and frontlets between our eyes; to teach them to our posterity, and to talk of them when we are in our houses, and when we walk by the way, when we lie down, and when we rise up. And great reason there is for this commandment, seeing that (as an ancient writer says) Quicquid in eis docetur veritas est: quicquid praecipitur bonitas est: quicquid promittitur foelicitas est: that is, whatever is taught in them is truth itself; whatever is commanded is goodness itself; whatever is promised is happiness itself. They being of such perfection, that nothing may be added to them, nor anything taken from them; of such infallible certainty, that heaven and earth shall sooner pass away than one title fall to the ground; so pleasant and delightful, that they exceed the honey and the honeycomb; and so profitable, that no treasures may be compared to them: seeing they are able to make us wiser than our enemies, than the aged, than our teachers; to make us wise to salvation; to give us an inheritance among them that are sanctified; indeed, able to save our souls. This being so, I cannot sufficiently wonder, that any calling themselves Christians should make less account of the book of God, than the Romans in old time did of their twelve Tables, and other Heathens of their Ritual books; or than the Jews at this day do of their Talmud, the Turks of their Alcoran, the Ethiopians of their Abetelis: especially that those who profess themselves Divines should so distaste the holy Scripture, that leaving it the clear fountain of the water of life, they should betake themselves to the troubled streams of men's devices, and dig for themselves pits which will hold no water. Wherein the Schoolmen (I mean the Sententiaries, the Summists, and Quodlibetaries) are chiefly (if not only) to be censured, who setting aside the Scriptures have vanished away in vain speculations in their Questions upon Lombard the Master of the Sentences, and upon Thomas their new Master. So that had it not been for some few Glosses (which notwithstanding like the gloss of Orleans do often corrupt the text) Nicolaus de Lyra, Hugo de S. Charo, and Peter Comestor (whom I should have named first, being so good a text man, that (as his name imports) he did eat up the text, as the poor man's horse drank up the moon) we should not have had among such a multitude of writers, one poor comment upon the Bible for diverse hundred years. And no marvel, seeing it is an ordinary thing for young novices in Popish Universities (and I would it were but there only) not to lay the foundation of their study in Divinity upon the rock, but upon the waters: that is, not upon the Scripture, but upon Aquinas, or some such Summist; and to read the Scripture no further than they give them light for the understanding of their School-Doctors. Witness one of their own writers, who testifies of himself that he had studied Scholastic divinity and the Canon Law for the space of 16 years, and yet never so much as greeted either the Scriptures or the Fathers. Which course they take, either because they presume to understand above what is written, contrary to the commandment of the Apostle (Romans 12:3), or because they judge the Scriptures too simple and shallow for them to wade in, as not affording them sufficient matter for their wits to work upon. Not considering that while they contemn the simplicity of the Scriptures and look beyond the moon, in the meantime with Thales they fall into the ditch; and that while they strive with the wings of their wit to soar above the clouds of other men's conceits, they sink into a sea of absurdities and errors. Nor yet remembering that the Scripture has great majesty joined with simplicity, and as great difficulty mixed with plainness and facility; and therefore not unfittingly resembled by Saint Gregory to the main ocean in which the lamb may wade and the elephant may swim. For the Spirit of God has in wonderful wisdom so tempered the Scriptures, that they are both obscure and perspicuous: in some places like a clasped or sealed book (Isaiah 29:11), in other places like a book that is opened (Revelation 5:5), being both easy and difficult. Easy, in that the entrance into the word gives light and understanding to the simple (Psalm 119:130). Difficult, in that some things are hard to be understood (2 Peter 3:16) and hard to be interpreted (Hebrews 5:11). Easy, to invite us to read and learn them; difficult, to exercise us lest we should contemn them. From the easy and plain places are gathered principles of religion, both articles of faith and rules of good life, which we call Catechisms. The difficult places require interpretation, and the Commentaries of the learned. Both which are necessary in the church of God. Catechisms have a necessary use, both in regard of the simple, who are to be fed with milk, being but babes in Christ; and of the learned who are strong men in Christ, that they may have some rule, whereby to try the spirits, consonant to the analogy of faith, and the doctrine of the orthodox Fathers of the Church; which Paul calls the form of knowledge (Romans 2:20) and the form of doctrine (Romans 6:17) and a pattern of wholesome words (2 Timothy 1:13); which forms of doctrine were in use in the primitive church in the Apostles' days, as it is manifest (Hebrews 6:1) where the Apostle sets down the principal points of the Catechism, calling them the doctrine of the beginning of Christ. And after the Apostles, we find that they were used by the learned Fathers, both of the Greek and Latin Church. Clement of Alexandria had his Pedagogue. Cyril of Jerusalem his Catechism and Mystagogue books. Origen (that famous Catechist) his books of principles. Theodoret his Epitome [illegible]. Lactantius his Institutions. Augustine his Enchiridion. Hugo de S. Victore his books of the Sacraments, or mysteries of Christian religion. And it were greatly to be wished that as in other reformed churches beyond the sea, they have a set Catechism which all men follow; and in the church of Rome one approved by the Council of Trent: so there were a uniform Catechism enjoined by public authority to be used in all families, schools, and churches in this land, that we might all with one mind and one mouth, judge and speak the same thing.

Now as Catechisms gathered out of plain and easy places are necessary for the simple, so Commentaries are as necessary for the understanding of such places as are more abstruse and difficult. Our Savior Christ (the great Doctor of the Church) has by his own practice given us a precedent hereof in expounding the law (Matthew 5), in expounding all hard parables to his disciples apart: for the text says, that he unfolded or expounded them to them (Mark 4:33). That he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things which were written of him (Luke 24:27). That he opened to them the scriptures (verse 32). And they have been always so accounted in the Church of God. For the Jews (as we know) had their Perushim, the Greek church their Scholia, the Latin Church their Glosses, with other Paraphrases and Expositions. Neither was it ever called in question by any, save by the fantastical Anabaptists, who rest only upon immediate revelations. And some prejudiced Papists, who hold the consent of all Catholics to be the true Scripture, both the gloss and the text, the written word, but inky Divinity, and a dead letter. And certain arrogant spirits who with Nestorius scorn to read any Interpreters. But how Commentaries ought to be written, it is not so easy to define, there being such difference as well in regard of the manner of writing, as of the measure. For besides that the Popish writers make four several senses of the Scripture, commending Jerome to excel in the Literal, Origen in the Allegorical, Ambrose in the Anagogical, Chrysostom in the Tropological; they have above fifty several ways of expounding the Scripture, as their own writers do record. In the measure, we find some too tedious, as the two Alphonsi, Tostatus, and Salmeron, who upon every small occasion digress from the text, or rather take occasion to enter into infinite frivolous questions, which breed strife rather than godly edifying which is by faith. For there is not so short a chapter in the Bible, upon which the former moves not above eight score questions: whereupon his volumes grow to that bigness, that one contracting his Commentary upon Saint Matthew and drawing it into an Epitome, yet could not so abridge it, but that it contained above a thousand pages in folio in the largest volume and smallest character. The other is so short with his 12 volumes upon the Evangelists, that he might well have contracted leaves into lines, and lines into letters. Which tedious discourses, and impertinent excursions from the text, serve for no other end but to cast a mist before the eyes of the reader, and draw (as it were) the veil of Moses over his face, so that he cannot see the meaning of the Holy Ghost. Others on the contrary are too short and compendious, offending as much in brevity as the former in prolixity: by name, Emanuel Sa the Jesuit, whose Commentaries upon the Bible are shorter than the text itself, like to those of Apollinaris, of whom Jerome writes, that a man who reads them would think he read contents of chapters, rather than Commentaries. But as for the manner: the literal sense (which our author here follows) is the only sense intended by the Spirit of God; the Allegorical, Tropological, Anagogical, being but several uses and applications thereof: for the Scripture (consisting in the sense not in the letters) is profitable to teach and reprove, as Paul says; whereas from the Allegorical sense no necessary argument can be taken (as their own doctors confess) either to confirm or confute any point of doctrine; and therefore much less from the Tropological or Anagogical. And as for the measure, in regard of brevity or prolixity, the golden mean has always been judged by the learned to be the best, which is not only to give the bare meaning paraphrastically, but to make collection of doctrine and application of uses; yet briefly, rather pointing at the chief heads, than dwelling long upon any point. Some are of opinion that a Commentator is only to give the literal sense of the place, without making further use of application or instruction: to which I could easily subscribe, if all the Lord's people could prophesy, or if all were able to handle the word of God, the sword of the Spirit. For as to an expert Musician who is acquainted with the concords or rules of discant, it is as good a direction to have only the ground as if he had every point pricked out to him, being inured to the division upon every point as it falls out in the ground: so to him that is acquainted with the word of God, a short and concise handling of the Scripture may be as good a direction as if every point were discoursed at large. But because all readers are not strong men in Christ, some being but babes, who must have everything minced and cut small to them before they can receive it; neither all teachers expert and prompt Scribes, like to Ezra, nor mighty in the Scripture as Apollos, such as are able to divide the word aright, and apply it fitly as they ought — some being deceitful workmen perverting it to their own destruction, in pressing the two breasts of the Scripture, the Old and New Testament, so that instead of milk, they suck nothing but blood; others, unskillful, casting wild Coloquintida into the pot of the children of the prophets, being too hasty to learn, and too ignorant to know of themselves what they should have gathered — therefore to help the ignorance of the one, and hinder the malice of the other (and so to profit the most) beside the meaning, he has briefly drawn out such doctrines as naturally arise from the text, showing withal how they ought to be applied for confutation, correction, instruction, consolation. Which he has done with such dexterity, (artificially matching together two things, heretofore insociable, Brevity and Perspicuity) that the like (I take it) has not been performed heretofore by any Expositor upon this Epistle: which we may well call the key of the New Testament, in that it handles the weightiest points of doctrine, whether we consider the necessary knowledge thereof, or the controversies of these times. Therefore Luther after he had once publicly expounded it, took in hand again, and interpreted it the second time, beginning (as himself says) where he ended, according to the saying of Sirach, When a man has done what he can, he must begin again. Which Commentary, seeing it has found such good entertainment among us, being but a foreigner, and having lost much of its strength, and taken wind by changing from language to language, as wine from one vessel to another: I doubt not but this, being a free-denizen, will find the like favor and acceptance, the rather, if it will please your Honor to vouchsafe it your countenance: to whose protection and patronage I here commend it, as Saint Luke did his Histories to the most noble Theophilus; desiring hereby to testify my humble duty to your Honor, and my thankfulness to God for the riches of his grace bestowed upon you in [reconstructed: the mystery] of the Gospel, for your zeal of God's glory, your love of the truth, and of all those that unfeignedly embrace the truth.

And thus fearing to hinder the course of your more serious cogitations & actions, I humbly take may leaue: Desyring the Lord, who has promised to honor those that honor him, that as he has made you honorable in your noble progenitors, so he would make you thrise honorable in your future successors, and long continue you a notable instrument under his Highnes, of the peace and welfare of your country as hetherto he has done, accomplishing all your desires for present prosperitie and future felicitie. From Emanuell colledge in Cambridge: August. 10. 1604.

Your Honours most humbly deuoted RAFE CVDWORTH.