7" 



tliaii feleftion or judgment feems to have given them birth : yet of the 

 faft itfelf, even as ftated by the author of the Brevis Confutatio, there 

 does not, I apprehend, appear fufhcient certainty. The learned Bijhop 

 of Chichejier ftands in direft oppofition to the learned Bijhop of London ; 

 the one affirming in his Prolegomena in Pfalmos, *' quantitatis fyllabarum 

 nidla ratio habetur ;" the other, in his Brevis Confutatio, as roundly 

 afferting, " quantitatis fyllabarum yem/^r habetur ratio*" 



Who fhall decide when doflors difsagree ?* 



But fuppofing the point fufficiently eftabliflied, the deteftion itfelf demon-- 

 ftrates the fingularity, as if it had faid in the very language of the fcrip-- 

 tures, " hitherto flialt thou go, and no further". Thefe obfervations' 

 will prefently affift us in fliewing how it came to pafs that the Greek and 

 Roman languages were unfavorable to rhime. And this part of the fub- 

 jeft has been the longer infifted on, becaufe it is the foundation on which 

 the whole of the argument muft {land or fall. 



It will not, I prefume, be neceflary to trace the decay and declenfion of 

 the facred language through its various ftages of corruption, from the 

 difperfion of tongues to the long and bitter bondage of the Ifraelites in 

 JEgypt, where their language mufl: have undergone a fevere and lamen- 

 table cliange: " cum fortunis gentium mutari quoque fermonem": Vofs. 

 de mr. Ryth. Nor from thence to purfue it througia all their grofs idola- 

 tries, wliich permute a language more perhaps than bondage itfelf, to 

 the Babylonifli captivity, when " baud dubium quin lingua hjec multum 

 " priftini fplendoris amiferit, atque Chaldsea vocabula plurima irrepferint", 

 bitringa lib, i. cap. 3. Nor from thence to deduce it to the invafion of 

 Antiochus Epiphanes, when both the language and the country itfelf 

 fuffered fo total an alteration, as to render tliem altogether Syrian. 

 Though fomething not unforeigu to our purpofe might perhaps be ga- 

 thered from the poetry of the Hebrews during thefe periods of revolu- 

 tion, the inveftigation would both detain the academy too long, and ap- 

 pear 



* Vide Append. Numb, 1. 



