NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 585 



eminent commentators took a similar view, and insisted that the 

 sin of Lot's wife was venial, and therefore, at the worst, could 

 only subject her to the fires of purgatory. 



The eleventh chapter discusses at length the question liow she 

 was converted into salt, and, mentioning many theological opin- 

 ions, dwells especially upon the view of Rivetus that a thunder- 

 holt, made up apparently of fire, sulphur, and salt, wrought her 

 transformation at the same time that it blasted the land ; and he 

 bases this opinion upon the twenty-ninth chapter of Deuteronomy 

 and the one hundred and seventh Psalm. 



Later, there is presented a sacred scientific theory that " saline 

 particles entered into her until her whole body was infected " ; 

 and with this Masius connects another piece of sanctified science, 

 to the effect that " stagnant bile " may have rendered the surface 

 of her body " entirely shining, bitter, dry, and deformed/' 



Finally, in the fourth division of the second section, he comes 

 to the great question whether the salt pillar is still in existence. 

 On this he is full and fair. On one hand he allows that Luther 

 thought that it was involved in the general destruction of Sodom 

 and Gomorrah, and he cites various travelers who had failed to 

 find it ; but, on the other hand, he gives a long chain of evidence 

 to show that it continued to exist : very wisely he reminds the 

 reader that the positive testimony of those who have seen it must 

 outweigh the negative testimony of those who have not, and finally 

 decides that the salt statue is still in being. 



No doubt a work like this produced a considerable effect in 

 Protestant countries ; indeed, this effect seems evident as far off 

 as England, for, in 1720, we find in Dean Prideaux's " Old and New 

 Testament connected " a map on which the statue of salt is care- 

 fully indicated. So, too, in Holland, in the " Sacred Geography," 

 published at Utrecht in 1758, by the theologian Bachiene, we find 

 him, while showing many signs of rationalism, evidently inclined 

 to the old views as to the existence of the salt pillar; but just here 

 comes a curious evidence of the real direction of the current of 

 thought through the century, for, nine years later, in the German 

 translation of Bachiene's work we find copious notes by the trans- 

 lator in a far more rationalistic spirit ; indeed, we see the dawn of 

 the inevitable day of compromise, for we now have, instead of 

 the old argument that the divine power by one miraculous act 

 changed Lot's wife into a salt pillar, the suggestion that she was 

 caught in a shower of sulphur and saltpeter, covered by it, and 

 that the result was a lump, which, in a general way, is called in 

 our sacred books " a pillar of salt." * 



* For Briemle, see his " Andachtige Pilgerfahrt," p. 129. For Masius, see his " De 

 Uxore Lothi in Statuam Salis con versa," Hafnia?, 1720, especially pp. 29-31. For Dean 

 Prideaux, see his "Old and New Testament connected in the History of the Jews," 1*720, 



