Dialogue Against the Marcionites, Exhortation to Martyrdom (Wettstein 1674)

...a more sincere and richer autograph than either Picus or Perionius, the thing itself speaks. Our Observations will confirm the truth of both testimonies. To understand them correctly, it must be known that three versions of this dialogue exist: The first was that of Johannes Picus, a most learned Senator of Paris, which he presented to Henry II, King of France, in the year 1555, although the title of the edition bears the following year, '56. At the same time in Basel, Humphrey was preparing another version at the house of Jerome Froben, as these words of his teach: "I translated from Greek the new Dialogues against the Marcionites a year and a half ago from a Frobenian manuscript codex, rendering the sense, not the words, and appending rather than numbering: everywhere taking care that nothing placed in Greek be destroyed or lost by translating." This he wrote on the 6th of August, 1557. Joachim Perionius, a Benedictine, made the third, regarding which this appears from the aforementioned Rivetus and Labbe: that Gilbert Genebrard, in the year 1574, inserted both versions of our dialogue into his edition of the Works of Origen, namely that of Perionius and Humphrey: the former in Volume I, the latter in Volume II. For what reason? I do not wish to guess, since we were not permitted to be so blessed as to see the translation of Perionius, either in that of Genebrard or in any other edition. Perhaps this moved him: that the interpretation of Humphrey seemed to him to be fuller and from a more perfect codex; and certainly not without cause. For a collation demonstrates this to the eye. But indeed, Humphrey often acted more as a paraphraser than a translator; nor did he rarely insert certain things so that he might obtain the meaning in any way possible. Therefore, since that version was for the most part more verbose than the Latin version could be equated to the Greek exemplar, we were forced to condense it and to compose another entirely in many places. In which matter, the version of Johannes Picus helped us much, being much more restricted to the Greek words; I add, also clearer in many places. Meanwhile, I do not deny that both differ in many periods, which can be doubted by no one who has inspected the codices themselves to have arisen from either no disjunction or a bad one. But as far as our study allowed, having considered the Scope, the Precedents, and the Consequences, and what the nature of the things themselves about which they were discussing seemed to require or admit, we have placed them sincerely and candidly; willingly yielding place to better ones offered or shown.