published his inaugural address as Professor of Sacred Letters and Dean of the Theological Faculty at Wittenberg. All his efforts were given to making Luther's old university a fortress of the orthodox theory. His address, like many others in various parts of Europe, shows that in his time an inaugural with any save an orthodox statement of the theological platform would not be tolerated. Few things in the past are to the sentimental mind more pathetic, to the philosophical mind more natural, and to the progressive mind more ludicrous, than addresses at high festivals of theological schools. The audience has generally consisted mainly of estimable elderly gentlemen, who received their theology in their youth, and who in their old age have watched over it with jealous care to keep it well protected from every fresh breeze of thought. Naturally, a theological professor inaugurated under such auspices endeavours to propitiate his audience. Sennert goes to great lengths both in his address and in his grammar, published nine years later; for, declaring the Divine origin of Hebrew to be quite beyond controversy, he says: "Noah received it from our first parents, and guarded it in the midst of the waters; Heber and Peleg saved it from the confusion of tongues."

The same doctrine was no less loudly insisted upon by the greatest authority in Switzerland, Buxtorf, professor at Basle, who proclaimed Hebrew to be "the tongue of God, the tongue of angels, the tongue of the prophets"; and the effect of this proclamation may be imagined when we note in 1663 that his book had reached its sixth edition.

It was re-echoed through England, Germany, France, and America, and, if possible, yet more highly developed. In England Theophilus Gale set himself to prove that not only all the languages, but all the learning of the world, had been drawn from the Hebrew records.

This orthodox doctrine was also fully vindicated in Holland. Six years before the close of the seventeenth century, Morinus, Doctor of Theology, Professor of Oriental Languages, and pastor at Amsterdam, published his great work on Primaval Language. Its frontispiece depicts the confusion of tongues at Babel, and, as a pendant to this, the pentecostal gift of tongues to the apostles. In the successive

chapters of the first book he proves that language could not have come into existence save as a direct gift from heaven; that there is a primitive language, the mother of all the rest; that this primitive language still exists in its pristine purity; that this language is the Hebrew. The second book is devoted to proving that the Hebrew letters were divinely received, have been preserved intact, and are the source of all other alphabets. But in the third book he feels obliged to allow, in the face of the contrary dogma held, as he says, by "not a few most eminent men piously solicitous for the authority of the sacred text," that the Hebrew punctuation was, after all, not of Divine inspiration, but a late invention of the rabbis.

France, also, was held to all appearance in complete subjection to the orthodox idea up to the end of the century. In 1697 appeared at Paris perhaps the most learned of all the books written to prove Hebrew the original tongue and source of all others. The Gallican Church was then at the height of its power. Bossuet as bishop, as thinker, and as adviser of Louis XIV, had crushed all opposition to orthodoxy. The Edict of Nantes had been revoked, and the Huguenots, so far as they could escape, were scattered throughout the world, destined to repay France with interest a thousandfold during the next two centuries. The bones of the Jansenists at Port Royal were dug up and scattered. Louis XIV stood guard over the piety of his people. It was in the midst of this series of triumphs that Father Louis Thomassin, Priest of the Oratory, issued his Universal Hebrew Glossary. In this, to use his own language, “the divinity, antiquity, and perpetuity of the Hebrew tongue, with its letters, accents, and other characters," are established forever and beyond all cavil, by proofs drawn from all peoples, kindreds, and nations under the sun. This superb, thousandcolumned folio was issued from the royal press, and is one of the most imposing monuments of human piety and follytaking rank with the treatises of Fromundus against Galileo, of Quaresmius on Lot's Wife, and of Gladstone on Genesis and Geology.

The great theologic-philologic chorus was steadily maintained, and, as in a responsive chant, its doctrines were

echoed from land to land. From America there came the earnest words of John Eliot, praising Hebrew as the most fit to be made a universal language, and declaring it the tongue "which it pleased our Lord Jesus to make use of when he spake from heaven unto Paul." At the close of the seventeenth century came from England a strong antiphonal answer in this chorus; Meric Casaubon, the learned Prebendary of Canterbury, thus declared: "One language, the Hebrew, I hold to be simply and absolutely the source of all.” And, to swell the chorus, there came into it, in complete unison, the voice of Bentley-the greatest scholar of the old sort whom England has ever produced. He was, indeed, one of the most learned and acute critics of any age; but he was also Master of Trinity, Archdeacon of Bristol, held two liv ings besides, and enjoyed the honour of refusing the bishopric of Bristol, as not rich enough to tempt him. Noblesse oblige: that Bentley should hold a brief for the theological side was inevitable, and we need not be surprised when we hear him declaring: "We are sure, from the names of persons and places mentioned in Scripture before the Deluge, not to insist upon other arguments, that the Hebrew was the primitive language of mankind, and that it continued pure above three thousand years until the captivity in Babylon." The power of the theologic bias, when properly stimulated with ecclesiastical preferment, could hardly be more perfectly exemplified than in such a captivity of such a man as Bentley.

Yet here two important exceptions should be noted. In England, Prideaux, whose biblical studies gave him much authority, opposed the dominant opinion; and in America, Cotton Mather, who in taking his Master's degree at Harvard had supported the doctrine that the Hebrew vowel points were of divine origin, bravely recanted and declared for the better view.*

* The quotation from Guichard is from L'Harmonie Étymologique des Langues, dans laquelle par plusieurs Antiquités et Étymologies de toute sorte, je démonstre évidemment que toutes les langues sont descendues de l'Hébraique; par M. Estienne Guichard, Paris, 1631. The first edition appeared in 1606. For Willett, see his Hexapla, London, 1608, pp. 125-128. For the Address of L'Empereur, see his publication, Leyden, 1627. The quotation from Lightfoot, beginning "Other commendations," etc., is taken from his Erubhin, or Miscellanies, edition of 1629;

But even this dissent produced little immediate effect, and at the beginning of the eighteenth century this sacred doctrine, based upon explicit statements of Scripture, seemed forever settled. As we have seen, strong fortresses had been built for it in every Christian land: nothing seemed more unlikely than that the little groups of scholars scattered through these various countries could ever prevail against them. These strongholds were built so firmly, and had behind them so vast an army of religionists of every creed, that to conquer them seemed impossible. And yet at that very moment their doom was decreed. Within a few years from this period of their greatest triumph, the garrisons of all these sacred fortresses were in hopeless confusion, and the armies behind them in full retreat; a little later, all the important orthodox fortresses and forces were in the hands of the scientific philologists.

How this came about will be shown in the third part of this chapter.

see also his works, vol. iv, pp. 46, 47, London, 1822. For Bishop Brian Walton, see the Cambridge edition of his works, 1828, Prolegomena, §§ 1 and 3. As to Walton's giving up the rabbinical points, he mentions in one of the latest editions of his work the fact that Isaac Casaubon, Joseph Scaliger, Isaac Vossius, Grotius, Beza, Luther, Zwingli, Brentz, Ecolampadius, Calvin, and even some of the popes, were with him in this. For Sennert, see his Dissertatio de Ebraica S. S. Linguæ Origine, etc., Wittenberg, 1657; also his Grammatica Orientalis, Wittenberg, 1666. For Buxtorf, see the preface to his Thesaurus Grammaticus Lingua Sancta Hebræa, sixth edition, 1663. For Gale, see his Court of the Gentiles, Oxford, 1672. For Morinus, see his Exercitationes de Lingua Primava, Utrecht, 1697. For Thomassin, see his Glossarium Universale Hebraicum, Paris, 1697. For John Eliot's utterance, see Mather's Magnalia, book iii, p. 184. For Meric Casaubon, see his De Lingua Anglia Vet., p. 160, cited by Massey, p. 16 of Origin and Progress of Letters. For Bentley, see his works, London, 1836, vol. ii, p. 11, and citations by Welsford, Mithridates Minor, p. 2. As to Bentley's position as a scholar, see the famous estimate in Macaulay's Essays. For a short but very interesting account of him, see Mark Pattison's article in vol. iii of the last edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. The position of Pattison as an agnostic dignitary in the English Church eminently fitted him to understand Bentley's career, both as regards the orthodox and the scholastic world. For perhaps the most full and striking account of the manner in which Bentley lorded it in the scholastic world of his time, see Monk's Life of Bentley, vol. ii, chap. xvii, and especially his contemptuous reply to the judges, as given in vol. ii, pp. 211, 212. For Cotton Mather, see his biography by Samuel Mather, Boston, 1729, pp. 5, 6.

III. BREAKING DOWN OF THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW.

We have now seen the steps by which the sacred theory of human language had been developed: how it had been strengthened in every land until it seemed to bid defiance forever to advancing thought; how it rested firmly upon the letter of Scripture, upon the explicit declarations of leading fathers of the Church, of the great doctors of the Middle Ages, of the most eminent theological scholars down to the beginning of the eighteenth century, and was guarded by the decrees of popes, kings, bishops, Catholic and Protestant, and the whole hierarchy of authorities in church and

state.

And yet, as we now look back, it is easy to see that even in that hour of its triumph it was doomed.

tant.

The reason why the Church has so fully accepted the conclusions of science which have destroyed the sacred theory is instructive. The study of languages has been, since the Revival of Learning and the Reformation, a favourite study with the whole Western Church, Catholic and Protes. The importance of understanding the ancient tongues in which our sacred books are preserved first stimulated the study, and Church missionary efforts have contributed nobly to supply the material for extending it, and for the application of that comparative method which, in philology as in other sciences, has been so fruitful. Hence it is that so many leading theologians have come to know at first hand. the truths given by this science, and to recognise its fundamental principles. What the conclusions which they, as well as all other scholars in this field, have been absolutely forced to accept, I shall now endeavour to show.

The beginnings of a scientific theory seemed weak indeed, but they were none the less effective. As far back as 1661, Hottinger, professor at Heidelberg, came into the chorus of theologians like a great bell in a chime; but like a bell whose opening tone is harmonious and whose closing tone is discordant. For while, at the beginning, Hottinger cites a formidable list of great scholars who had held the sacred theory of the origin of language, he goes on to note a closer resemblance to the Hebrew in some languages than in