Verklaring van de evangelische parabolen

had first held his academic exercises over them.
I found myself at once moved with a desire to look into what his Right Reverend A title of respect for Vitringa had dictated concerning those recently mentioned parables from Luke 11, and to note from them what his Right Reverend had specifically observed, which had not so much occurred to my own thoughts.
From these smaller parables, I was led to various others, whose explanation I read not only with desire and pleasure, but also (to have a deeper impression of them) I took the trouble to copy them out in the Dutch language. So that others also, ignorant of the languages meaning Latin and Greek, the standard languages of scholarship at the time, might have utility from them, to whom I might later find it good to communicate these translations of mine in writing.
This eventually enticed me so far that I saw fit to translate all those parables in the same way, without leaving one out. As I have done. And that mostly at such times when one is usually idle, such as when I was staying with friends in Gelderland, at Arnhem, at Rosendael, at Wageningen, or at Zutphen, or elsewhere on this or that estate; when I carefully observed the mornings and other intervals to continue that work. And thus I did not spend the time of my recreations entirely idle and unfruitful. In which I made so much progress in a short time that the work was finished, almost before I could have thought or imagined it myself.
When I was busy with it, I began to be persuaded that one would do the public an injustice if one begrudged the Dutch churches this work, and neglected to share it through print. Yet, because nothing should happen in this without the knowledge and full consent of Mr. Vitringa himself, I took the liberty of consulting with his Right Reverend about it by a letter: whether, namely, his Right Reverend could approve that this work be published by me in the Dutch language, with the addition of some notes for its clarification.
To which his Right Reverend was pleased to answer, on the 13th of September of the year 1712.
"Your Reverence has given me a new proof of your great

affection for me, in the proposal of your letter of the 14th of this month. I confess that it has brought me some embarrassment, and, may I say, some shame, that Your Reverence has conceived such a favorable opinion of those slight Dictamen dictated lessons of mine on the parables, that they, being wrought without greater effort, would be useful to the Church; and what is much more, that Your Reverence would lend a hand to translate them and bring them to light without my labor. The Dictamen lecture notes were made by me based on some notes and digestion of thoughts that I usually made a very short time before the class Collegie academic lecture, and can therefore not be anything but very imperfect; although I had determined my thoughts on the bulk of it. It is true that it was favorably received, and that from many sides outside this province, and also from Hungary, requests have been made to publish it as it was: which I have steadfastly refused. I have only, upon strong insistence, allowed that it, being somewhat revised according to a good transcript, might be printed without my knowledge in Hungary or Germany, because the students of those nations mostly all copy it out. But the war has hindered that work in those places. Now I know, and everyone with me, that Your Reverence putting your own hand to this work would undoubtedly, with more leisure, execute it more successfully than I have done in these Dictata lecture notes: as appears from the samples of the parables worked on by Your Reverence, which I myself recently used to my advantage in explaining the Lord's reasons in order, concerning the parable of the prodigal son and what belongs to it. Therefore, I do not know why Your Reverence's eye should judge mine more favorably than your own? I have moreover, and always maintain, much hesitation to show myself in public; and when I publish books, or something of mine comes out, I often make myself so embarrassed that I have trouble with myself. However, since Your Reverence has already taken so much trouble regarding this, and views the work with a more favorable eye than I do: I would wish that Your Reverence, staying with those same thoughts, would please send me a small sample of it, to see how much there would be to improve..."