THE ACOVIAN CATECHISM, WITH NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS, TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN: TO WHICH IS PREFIXED A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF UNITARIANISM IN POLAND AND THE ADJACENT COUNTRIES. BY THOMAS REES, F.S.A. LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1818. SEVERAL years have now elapsed since the following work was first promised to the public. A variety of circumstances have operated to delay its appearance; of which the principal has been a painful bodily indisposition of long continuance, whereby the translator was unfitted for the close application, and the mental exertion, which his undertaking required. A kind Providence, to whom he can never be sufficiently grateful, has at last restored to him the invaluable blessing of health, and enabled him thus to put the finishing hand to his task. He cannot send his work forth to the world without expressing his consciousness, that it will stand in need of much indulgence. The reader of discernment and taste will not fail to discover many defects in its literary execution. A 2 But But the translator ventures to cherish the hope that the acute sufferings under which a great part of it was composed, will plead his apology for the principal of them, and mitigate the severity of criticism in respect to the whole.. In a publication of this nature, a laboured elegance of style would have been misplaced; and from the character of the original would have been impracticable in the translation.. All that has been aimed at, has been, to ex-. hibit the work in an English dress that, would convey to the reader as correct an idea as possible, not only of the sentiments, but also of the manner of thinking, and the pecu-liar tone of feeling, which distinguished the authors of the Catechism. In this object, the. translator is obliged to say, he has not always succeeded to his wishes; for he has, in his progress, had to encounter difficulties which he dares not flatter himself that he has in every case completely vanquished. On some of the subjects discussed in the Catechism, the authors and editors had not very distinct and clear ideas; there is therefore necessarily a degree degree of obscurity in the language in which they endeavour to express their thoughts. They have also occasionally embarrassed their style by the employment of scholastic terms and phrases, which, without a previous knowledge of the particular treatise or system to which their observations were meant more immediately to apply, it is not easy fully to understand. The translator confesses that he has on these accounts been sometimes considerably perplexed: and he is not without apprehension, that, in a few instances, the obscurity of the original may have been transfused into the translation, and that he has failed to express the precise shade of meaning which the authors intended to convey. He has however done his best; and it will afford him great pleasure to receive the corrections of any persons who may be more fortunate than him-self in eliciting the sense of the original work. It was the translator's first design to give, with an English version of the latest authorized edition of the Racovian Catechism, a detailed statement of all the alterations made. |