Prologue — Prologue of St. Jerome

I. Matthew from Judea, just as he is placed first in order, so he first wrote a Gospel in Judea, whose calling to the Lord was from the acts of a publican. He takes up first the origins of two fathers in the generation of Christ: one whose first circumcision was in the flesh, and another whose election was according to the heart; for Christ came from both fathers. And thus, the number fourteen set down triformly, presenting the origin from the faith of believing to the time of election, and setting it in order from the election to the day of the transmigration, and then giving an exact description from the transmigration down to the Christ, he sets forth the hurried generation of the coming of the Lord, giving sufficient attention both to number and to time; both that he might display himself, what he is, and also pointing to the work of God in himself, as well as in those whose race he set forth, that he might not deny the testimony of Christ working from the beginning.

II. The time, the order, the number, the arrangement or reason of all these things, what is necessary for faith, that Christ is God, who was made from a woman, made under the law, born of a virgin, suffered in the flesh, fastened all things to the cross, so triumphing over them in himself, rising in the flesh and restoring the name of the Father to the Son in the fathers, and the name of the Son to the Father in the sons, without beginning, without end, showing himself to be one with the Father, because they are one.

III. In which Gospel it is useful to those desiring God to understand in this way the first or the middle or the perfect things, so that reading they might understand both the calling of the Apostle and the work of the Gospel and, through all, the love of God born in the flesh, and then reflect on this thing in which they are held back and desire to take hold of.

IV. But for us in the pursuit of the preface there has been this: to hand on both the faith of things done, and not to leave unmentioned the arrangement, to be understood diligently by those who are seeking, of the God who is at work.