Verklaring van de evangelische parabolen

had also gained five others with them: "Well done, you good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things; I will set you over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord." This is the desire of

(Right Reverend Sir)

Written at Velsen,
on the longest day
of the year 1715.

Your very obliged
Servant,

JOHANNES D'OUTREIN.

Decorative initial letter H It will perhaps seem strange to many that I, after being busy for about thirty years in publishing my own writings, presently come forward as the translator and publisher of someone else’s work. Therefore, I deem it necessary to give the reader some account of the occasion that led me to this.

It happened, in the year 1711, that I, as an introduction to a public prayer during the extraordinary prayer sessions, treated the parable in Luke, Chapter 11, verses 5 to 8, of the Friend at Midnight. In some following sessions, I also treated the continuation thereof in verses 9 and 10, and verses 11 to 13. I also treated the parable of the oppressed widow and the unjust judge, Luke 18:1 to 8. I have also published the explanation and application of these in print, as an appendix to a small treatise called the "Balm of Gilead," at the beginning of the year 1712.

In the course of that year, I undertook a small journey to Asperen to visit D. Bernard Sebastiaan Cremer, my esteemed friend and partly also my student, who had recently become a minister there. With him, I found the Dictata lecture notes of the very renowned Sir Campegius Vitringa, my highly honored teacher, concerning the Parables of Jesus Christ. These were written out in the Latin language by his (D. Cremer’s) own hand, following the copy of a certain minister in Zeeland. I had never seen these Dictata before, because His Reverence, after my departure from Friesland,