(printed p. 1 — Book I)
At the previous autumn fair at Frankfurt, a friend brought me, as though a parting gift from a banquet, a piece of Batavian merchandise. It was Johannes Drusius’s little book On the Hasidaeans, in which he censured a few out of the many things that I had noted about them four years ago in my Commentary on Maccabees. Since, however, “he who hates correction,” or, as our interpreter translates with the Greeks, “he who hates rebukes,” is foolish, that censure was certainly not unwelcome to me.
And because the matter was not a large one, but was almost entirely about one little word of Josephus Gorionides and about the spelling of one syllable, it seemed that it might be passed over in silence, and that the critic should not be grudged his small triumph. Yet because the censure is unjust, and because it comes from an adversary of the Catholic faith, it seemed right to defend the truth and not to let even the smallest point pass,
[margin: Occasion. Prov. 12; Greek rendering: “he who hates rebukes is foolish.”]
(printed p. 2)
so that the religious innovator could deservedly boast of it.
Yet so that more fruit and usefulness might come to the reader, I resolved on something larger: to discuss, in their whole class, the sects once most famous among the Jews, of which there is very frequent mention either in the sacred pages of the New Testament or in ancient and reputable authors. Since it will be shown later that these are three, I have entitled this little writing Trihaeresium, “On the Three Heresies,” in the same form and pattern by which Ausonius, no poor master of speech, once said Trihorium. I shall treat them first in general, and then each in order, so that there will be three books: the first will contain that general discussion, and the remaining two the particular discussion.