A translator's lament

Lest we think many of the topics raised on this board are of recent vintage, I ran across a translator's letter to the reader for an old English Bible which contained the following:

... Look (now that there has been an abundance of translations) whether your men be more virtuous, your women more chaste, your children more obedient ... your friends more faithful, your laity more just in dealing, your clergy more devout in praying; whether there be more relgion, fear of God, faith in conscience in all states now, than of old, where there was not so much reading, chattling and jangling of God's word, but much more sincere dealing, doing and keeping the same.

Look whether the most chaste and sacred sentences of God's holy word be not turned of many into mirth, mockery, amorous ballets and detestable letters of love and lewdness ...

... (They frame) the phrases of holy Scriptures after the form of profane writers ... having no religious respect to keep either the majesty or sincere simplicity of that venerable style of Christ's spirit ... which kind the Holy Ghost did choose of infinite wisdom to have the divine mysteries rather uttered in ...

(This English translaton is better) than the Greek text itself, in those places where they disagree.

The proof hereof is evidence because most of the ancient heretics were Greeks and therefore the Scriptures in Greek were more corrupted by them, as the ancient fathers often complain.

...Again, Erasmus, the best translator of the latter (Greek text) ... says that the Greek sometimes has superfluities corruptly added to the text of holy Scripture, as Matthew to to the end of the Pater noster ...

... we presume not in hard places to mollify hard speech or phrases, but religiously keep them word for word, and point for point, for fear of missing, or restraining the sense of the Holy Ghost ...