English-speaking Protestants today find themselves increasingly in the odd position of reading almost exclusively non-English writers when they seek to drink from the deep wells of church history. Why? Well because these texts, including writings of such great Reformers as Luther and Calvin, have been translated into a modern English idiom, and continue to be so translated. Meanwhile, the giants of 16th- and 17th-century English theology slip further and further from view as our language and rhetorical style evolves further and further away from the English deployed by these great masters.
