Sin theoni en christoni the answer to the preface of the Rhemish Testament. By…Syn theōi en christōi the ansvvere to the preface of the Rhemish Testament. By…

it must needs be, that it must continue whatsoever hath been written in that respect. For if it or any part thereof fall away, the same cannot according to th'ordinance of god either inform us against ignorance, or warn us against danger, or comfort us against afflictions, or finally do any other duty unto us, which we have need of, ⟨p. 95⟩& they were prepared for. Thirdly, if th'authority of th'authentical copies in Hebrew, Chaldee, & Greek fall: there is no high court of appeal, where controversy (rising upon the diversity of translations or otherwise) may be ended: so that the exhortation of having recourse unto the law & to the prophets, ¹and of our Saviour Christ asking² how it is written, and how readest thou: are now either of none effect, or not sufficient: whilst these disgracers and disgraders of the Scripture have taught men to say, that the copies are corrupted, and the sense changed. Nay, not only our estate is worse then theirs under the law, and in our saviour Christs time: but worse than theirs which lived some hundred years after Christ, when th'ancient fathers exhorted in such cases, that men should make suit unto th'original Scriptures, to have an end of their controversies. Yea their own Gratian out of Augustine (falsely alleged for Jerome) sendeth us in deciding of differences, not to th'old ⟨p. 96⟩translator, but to th'originals of the Hebrew in th'old and of the Greek in the new testament. They use quarrelously to surmise against us, that we abridge the privileges of the Churches of our days; because we accord them not to be so ample in every point, as they were when the Apostles lived. But woe unto the Churches of our days, if the Scriptures be (as the Papists would bear us in hand) corrupted, if the Charters and records, whereby we hold the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven, are razed or otherwise falsified, if we have not wherewith to convey our selves to be children unto the heavenly father, and Priests unto God in Jesus Christ; further then from the hand of such a Scribe and Notary as both might err and hath erred diversly.³ These evidences were safely & surely kept, when one only nation of the Jews, and the same sometimes (a few excepted) unfaithful, bare the keys of the Lords library: now when there be many nations, that have keys unto