GOOD READER,—The people of God have ever been exercised with two sorts of enemies persecutors and sectaries: it is hard to say which is worst.
亲爱的读者，——上帝的子民一直受到两种敌人的考验：迫害者和分裂者：很难说哪一个更糟糕。
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When the Christian church began first to look forth in the world, there were adverse powers without ready to crush it, and Libertines who, like worms bred within the body, sought to devour the entrails and eat out the very bowels of it.
当基督教会开始在世界上崭露头角时，外部有敌对势力准备摧毁它，而内部有放荡主义者(Libertines)，如同体内滋生的蛆虫，企图吞噬其内脏，蚕食其核心。
The first ringleader was Simon Magus, and there followed Menander, Saturninus, Basilides, Carpocrates, Cerinthus, Ebion, Cerdo, Marcion, Tatianus, Valentinus, and many others, who, being once turned aside from the truth and the fellowship of the faithful, lost all awe of God, and were given up to a sottish judgment to believe all kinds of fables and fancies.
第一个首要人物是西门魔术师(Simon Magus)，随后出现了梅南德(Menander)、萨图尔尼努斯(Saturninus)、巴西里德(Basilides)、卡尔波克拉底(Carpocrates)、凯林斯(Cerinthus)、厄比昂(Ebion)、刻尔多(Cerdo)、马吉安(Marcion)、塔提安(Tatianus)、瓦伦提努斯(Valentinus)等许多人，他们一旦偏离真理和信徒的团契，就失去了对上帝的敬畏，陷入愚昧的判断中，相信各种寓言和幻想。
The monsters of Africa came from the unnatural commixtures of the beasts running wild in the deserts; so when men had once broken through the hedge, mingling their own fancies with the word of God, by an unnatural production they brought forth such monstrous and absurd opinions.
非洲的怪兽源于在沙漠中奔跑的野兽不自然的混合；同样，当人们一旦突破藩篱，将自己的幻想与上帝的话语混合，就会通过不自然的产物产生如此怪诞和荒谬的观点。
In succeeding ages the devil hath often played over the old game, sometimes oppressing the church by the tyranny of pseudo-Christians, as many martyrs being made by antichristian as pagan persecutions; at other times corrupting the truth by error, or rendering it suspicious by the divisions about it.
在随后的几个世纪里，魔鬼常常重复这个老把戏，有时通过伪基督徒的暴政压迫教会，反基督教迫害造就的殉道者与异教徒迫害造就的一样多；其他时候则通过错误来腐蚀真理，或通过分裂使其受到怀疑。
Heresies revolve as fashions, and in the course of a few years antiquated errors revive again, and that by their means who did not so much as know them by name.
异端邪说如同时尚一样循环往复，几年之内陈旧的错误又会重新复兴，而且是通过那些甚至不知其名的人的手段。
When God first called his people out of Babylon by Luther’s reformation, and the Christian religion began to be restored to its pristine purity, there was not only a Roman party to persecute, but a fanatical party to perplex the estate of reformation and retard the course of the gospel, as histories do abundantly declare, especially Sleidan in his Commentaries.
当上帝通过路德的改革首次呼召他的子民离开巴比伦，基督教信仰开始恢复其原始的纯洁时，不仅有罗马党派进行迫害，还有一个狂热的党派使改革事业陷入困惑并阻碍福音的进程，正如历史所广泛记载的那样，尤其是斯莱丹(Sleidan)在他的《评论》中所述。
What hath been our late experience we all know, and have cause to bewail: as soon as we were freed from our hard taskmasters, and a door of hope began to be opened to us, a swarm of Libertines have arisen among us, and do every day increase in number, power, and malice, and under various forms oppugn the unquestionable interests of Jesus Christ, to the great scandal of reformation, and the saddening of the hearts of the godly.
我们都知道我们最近的经历，并有理由为之哀叹：一旦我们从严苛的主人手中获得自由，希望之门开始向我们敞开，一群放纵主义者(Libertines)就在我们中间出现，他们每天在数量、权力和恶意上都在增长，并以各种形式反对耶稣基督无可争议的利益，这极大地玷污了改革，使虔诚者的心感到悲伤。
We seem to be ripe for a judgment, but from what corner the storm shall blow we cannot tell; some fear a return of popery, and that a second deluge of antichristianism shall overwhelm the western churches.
我们似乎已经成熟到可以接受审判，但我们无法预知风暴将从哪个角落吹来；有些人担心教皇制度会卷土重来，第二次反基督教的洪水将淹没西方教会。
The Papists, I confess, are dangerous, but the great and next fear I think to be from Libertines and a yokeless generation of men, who are most reproachful to religion and most troublesome.
我承认，教皇派是危险的，但我认为更大的、接下来的恐惧来自放纵主义者和一群不受约束的人，他们对宗教最为亵渎，也最令人困扰。
The spirit and drift of this epistle is carried out mainly against this fanatical and libertine party, and therefore I suppose it to be a mistake in Dr Willet, Mr Perkins, and others, when they would turn the edge of it against the Papists.
这封书信的精神和主旨主要是针对这个狂热和放纵的党派，因此我认为Dr Willet、Mr Perkins和其他人将其矛头指向天主教徒是一个错误。
I confess they had a temptation that way, these being the only heretical party with whom the church of God was then in suit, and symbolising in many things with those of the other extreme, as usually darkness and darkness doth better agree than light and darkness;
我承认他们有这样的诱惑，因为这是当时上帝的教会唯一在诉讼中的异端党派，并且在许多方面与另一个极端相似，就像通常黑暗与黑暗比光明与黑暗更容易相互认同；
but certainly the party described here are not a domineering faction, that carry things by power and greatness and height of natural abilities, as the Papists do, but a creeping party, such as by sordid and clancular ways seek to undermine the truth, a kind of mean and loose sort of people, that vented monstrous and gross conceits, chiefly out of envy, against those that excelled in gifts and place;
但这里描述的党派肯定不是一个专横的派系，不像天主教徒那样通过权力、伟大和高超的天赋来行事，而是一个潜伏的党派，通过卑劣和秘密的方式寻求破坏真理，是一种卑鄙和松散的人群，他们主要出于嫉妒，对那些在天赋和地位上出众的人发泄荒谬和粗俗的想法；
and if our modern Ranters, Familists, Quakers, be not here described in their lively colours (as if the apostle had lived to hear their blasphemous expressions and that contempt which they cast upon the officers of the church), I confess then I understand no thing of the whole epistle.
如果我们现代的狂热者（Ranters）、家庭主义者（Familists）、贵格会教徒（Quakers）不是在这里被生动地描绘出来（就好像使徒活着听到他们的亵渎言论和他们对教会官员的蔑视一样），那么我承认我对整封书信一无所知。
If the judicious reader let alone the larger discussion of the observations, and go but over the explications of each verse, he will soon find my observation true.
如果明智的读者不去关注更大的观察讨论，只是仔细阅读每一节经文的解释，他很快就会发现我的观察是正确的。