DEDICATION.

...[sa]cred original: "cris," completing "Sacris" rites and Ministries of the Christian Church. Even if I had most especially wished to abandon this pledge original: "vadium"; a formal or legal promise to complete a task—as my mind was leaning toward doing—I judged that it was not permissible after a controversy was raised against me by a certain Learned Man Scholars of this period often engaged in public "disputes" or "controversies" over theological interpretations concerning the primary hypotheses which I had embraced in that book of mine, and which I had used to illustrate the affairs of the Early Church original: "Ecclesiæ Primævæ" by comparing them to the Synagogue.

From this controversy, although it was otherwise most troublesome, I reaped this fruit: I found it necessary to apply myself more diligently to investigating certain sacred rites of the Synagogues. First, I did not want this fruit of my labor to be lost to me; then I also reflected that a necessary care for my reputation—not for the sake of increasing it (the excessive pursuit of which is called Ambition), but for defending it, both among the people of this age and for posterity, whose judgment no wise person scorns—demanded this of me: that I should explain the opinions I hold concerning the Conformity of the Government and Ministries of the Synagogue and the Church (which that Learned Man had made suspect and had condemned) both more clearly and with greater effort and industry applied, and also assert and support them more strongly, while changing or omitting those things in that first Dissertation of mine which were displeasing to me. I judged that this pertains to the glory of God, to whom all our sacred things ought to be devoted...