A New Translation Of The Remaining Chapters
JOHN CALVIN
has been taken with the text, the Translation being' uniformly as close and literal as the English idiom will admit. The Translator has carefully avoided all expression of private opinion on doctrinal and speculative points; he has not softened off any of the occasional roughness of the original views of his Author, nor has he encumbered his pages with long footnotes, either to rectify or elucidate the criticisms of the text.
His object has been, not to present his readers with the views and expositions of other Commentators, but to present Calvin, with all his excellencies and defects, before the English reader, in language as clear and simple as the various difficulties of the subject will allow, tie has not introduced quotations from other Divines, who have ably and impartially treated similar subjects, but, at certain intervals, (as for instance at the close of Ezekiel 10,) he has pointed out the Authors from whose Works much valuable information may be obtained.
The Translator may venture here to express his opinion, once for all, that Calvin's
Hebrew philology is not always correct: his critical exposition of the meaning and derivation of Hebrew words should seldom be received as the best possible. The labors of GESEnIUS and Rosenmuller have thrown great light upon this department of Sacred scholarship, and the results of such modern labors will be found ably condensed and adapted to the wants of the ordinary reader, in the Notes to Bishop
Newcome's ``Literal Translation of the Prophets,'' rendered very accessible in Tegg's
Edition of 1836. This work is very valuable for conciseness, accuracy, and the intelligible application of real learning.
Instead of distracting the attention by a variety of incoherent foot notes, it is intended to close the Second Volume of this Translation with the following Addenda, as a contribution towards a complete Apparatus Criticus: ---
1. A copious Index Of Words, Phrases, And Things, occurring in these Lectures, on the basis of the original Latin Index Locupletissimus.
2. An Index Of The Places Of Scripture illustrated in these Lectures.
3. A List Of The Sacred And Profane Authors quoted by Calvin, with references.
4. A Complete Synopsis Of The Contents Of The Whole Of Ezekiel's Prophecies
5. A Connected Translation Of Calvin's Version Of The First Twenty Chapters, With
A New Translation Of The Remaining Chapters
6. A List Of The Chief Interpreters, Ancient And Modern
7. A Notice Of The Ancient Versions And Codexes Which Contain Ezekiel's Prophecies
8. A few Dissertations on important subjects illustrating these Lectures, with references to various modern Treatises, philological, exegetical, and hermeneutical.
There is prefixed to the present Volume a faithful and spirited facsimile of a very rare Portrait Of Calvin, which the monogram shows to have been engraved by Henry
Hondius, or De Hondt the elder, an artist of considerable eminence, who was born at Duffel, in Brabant, about 1573, and died at La Haye in 1610. Among other works, he engraved Portraits of John Wickliffe, Philip Melancthon, John Bugenhagen, John Knox, and Jerome Savonarola.
It may be worth noticing, that Jodocus Hondius, or de Hondt, (who is also called
Henry Hondius the younger,) was the son of Jodocus Hondius, or de Hondt Jost, a xxiii