304 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



but he was also Master of Trinity, Archdeacon of Bristol, held 

 two livings besides, and enjoyed the honor of refusing the bishop- 

 ric of Bristol, as not rich enough to tempt him. Noblesse oblige : 

 that Bentley should hold a brief for the theological side was in- 

 evitable, and we need not be surprised when we hear him declar- 

 ing, " We are sure, from the names of persons and places men- 

 tioned in Scripture before the Deluge, not to insist upon other 

 arguments, that the Hebrew was the primitive language of man- 

 kind, and that it continued pure above three thousand years until 

 the captivity into Babylon." The power of the theologic bias, 

 when properly stimulated with ecclesiastical preferment, could 

 hardly be more perfectly exemplified than in this captivity of 

 such a man as Bentley. 



At the beginning of the eighteenth century this sacred doc- 

 trine, based, as was supposed, upon explicit statements of Script- 

 ure, 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 great- 

 est triumph, the garrisons of all these sacred fortresses were in 

 hopeless confusion, and the armies behind them in full retreat ; 

 a little later, both the orthodox fortresses and forces were in the 

 hands of the scientific philologists. 



How this came about will be shown in the second part of this 

 chapter.* 



* The quotation from Guichard is from L'Harmonie etymologique des langues . . . dans 

 laquelle par plusieurs Antiquites ct Etymologies de toute sorte, je demonstrc evidemment 

 que toutes les langues sont descendues de l'Hebraique ; 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'Empercur, see his publication, Leyden, 162*7. The 

 quotation from Lightfoot, beginning, " Other commendations," etc., is taken from his Erub- 

 hin, or Miscellanies, edition of 1629. 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 Ebraicae S. S. Linguae Originc, 

 etc., Wittenberg, 1657; also his Grammatica Orientalis, Wittenberg, 1666. For Buxtorf, 

 see the preface to his Thesaurus Grammaticus Linguae Sanctae Hebraepe, sixth edition, 1663. 

 For Gale, see his Court of the Gentiles, Oxford, 1672. For Morinus, see his Exercitationes 

 de Lingua Primaeva, Utrecht, 1694. For Thomassin, see his Glossarium Universale He- 

 braicum, Paris, 1697. For John Eliot's utterance, see Mather's Magnalia, Book III, p. 184. 

 For Meric Casaubon, see his De Lingua Anglia Yet., p. 160, cited by Massey, p. 16 of 

 Origin and Progress of Letters. For Bentley, see his works, London, 1S36, vol. ii, p. 11, 



