The first English translation of Saint Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho was made by Henry Brown, Vicar of Nether-Swell in Gloucestershire. It was printed in two volumes in Oxford in 1755.
This beautifully bound copy has a dedicatory inscription on the title page of the first volume, “G H Wheler from the Revd Thomas Wills.” Granville Wheler was a clergyman of the Church of England. He lived at Otterden Place, in Faversham, Kent, England. In 1729, he was the first to prove that electricity can be conducted, for which he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Granville Wheler died in 1770, and his library was dispersed the following year. In 1774, Thomas Wills married Selina Margaretta Wheler, third daughter of Granville Wheler.
The holy apostle Paul wrote of Christ as the New Adam. ‘For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive’ (I Corinthians 15:22).
Saint Justin Martyr writes of the Virgin Mary as the New Eve. By her obedience, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word’ (Luke 1:38), she undid the disobedience of our first mother. The Dialogue with Trypho is thought to have been written between the years AD 155-160.
It was pre-nicene texts including this one that converted me to Christianity and then to Orthodoxy. It was a great service that they were translated into English so early.