THE LATIN SERVICE. 465
efficacy, which believers have experience of, and which I should be sorry to conclude you to be unacquainted withal. " It is the power of God unto salvation," the immortal seed whereby we are begotten unto God, and the food whereby our souls are nourished. And all this is so not only as to the to ypa'rrov, " that which is written/' but the 7} ypa<pri, " the writing," or Scripture itself, which is given by in- spiration from God ; for though the things themselves written are the will of God, and intended in the writing, yet the writing itself, being given out by inspiration, is the word of God, and only original means of communicating the other unto us, or the word of God wherein his will is contained, — formally so, as the other is materially. (6.) I find you are not well pleased when you are minded of the contemptuous expressions which some of your friends have used concerning the holy Scripture ; but I am now enforced to tell you, that you yourself have equalled, in my apprehension, the very worst of them, in affirming that " nine parts in ten of it concern not your particular either to know or practise:" for I presume you make the instance only in yourself, intending all other individual persons no less than yourself The apostle tells us that " all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for in- struction in righteousness :" you, that " nine parts in ten of it do not concern us to know or practise ;" that is, not at all. He informs us, that " whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope :" not above one part of ten of what is so written, if you may be believed, is useful to any such purpose. Do you consider what you say? God hath given us his whole word for our use and benefit. " Nine parts in ten of it," say you, " do not concern us. Can possibly any man break forth into a higher reflection upon the wisdom and love of the holy God? or do you think you could have made a more woful discovery of your unacquaintedness with your own duty, the nature of faith and obedience evangelical, than you have done in these words? You will not make thus bold with the books that Aristotle hath left us in philosophy, or Galen in medi- cine. But the wisdom of God, in that writing which he hath given us for the revelation of his will, it seems, may be despised. Such fruit, in the depraved nature of man, will dfisrpla ryjg avdoXxr^g pro- duce. The practice we blame in you is not worse than the reason- ings you use in its confirmation. I pray God neither of them may be ever laid unto your charge.
Your following words are a commendation of the zeal and piety of the days and times before the Reformation, with reflections upon all things amongst us since; and this I shall pass by, so to avoid the occasion of representing unto you the true state of things, both here
VOL. XIV. SO
466 A VINDICATION OF THE ANIMADVERSIONS ON FIAT LUX.
and elsewhere, in the ages you so much extol. Neither, indeed, is it to any great purjoose to lay open anew that darkness and wicked- ness which the world groaned under, and all sober men complained of. You proceed to other exceptions, and say: —
" Where ' Fiat Lux' says that the Pentateuch or hagiography was never, by any high priest among the Jews, put into a vulgar tongue, nor the gospel or liturgy out of Greek in the eastern part of the Christian church, or Latin in the western, you slight this discourse of mine, because Hebrew, Greek, and Latin were vulgar tongues in themselves. I know this well enough; but when, and how long ago, were they so? Not for some thousand years, to my knowledge. And was the Bible, Psalms, or Christian liturgy, then put into vulgar tongues when those they were first written m ceased to be vulgar? This you should have spoken unto if you had meant to say any thing or gainsay me. Nor is it to purpose to tell me that St Jerome translated the Bible into Dalmatian. I know well enough it hath been translated by some special persons into Gothish, Arme- nian, Ethiopian, and other particular dialects; but did the church, either of the Hebrews or the Christians, either Greek or Latin, ever deliver it so translated to the generality of people, or use it in their service, or command it so to be done, as a thing of general concern- ment and necessity? So far is it from that, that they would never permit it."
I thought you would as little have meddled with this matter again as you have done with other things of the like disadvantage unto you. For, — 1. I told you sufficiently before what a vanity it was to inquire after a translation of the Old Testament out of the Hebrew before the Babylonish captivity, there being no other language but that understood amongst the generality of the Jewish people ; and I then manifested unto you, and shall do so farther immediately, that the translation of the Scripture into Syriac, which you inquire after, could have had no other design amongst the Jews in those days than your keeping of it in Latin hath, — namely, that the people might not understand it: for if you shall persist to think that the Jews, before the Babylonish cajDtivity at least, had any other vulgar lan- guage but the Hebrew, you will make all men of understanding smile at you at an extraordinary rate. Some while after the return of the people from their captivity, they began to lose the purity of their own tongue, and most of them imderstood the Syro-Chaldean, wherein about that time some small parts of the Scripture also were written. In no long process of time a great portion of them living- scattered in the provinces of the Macedonian empire, and therefore called Hellenists, used and spake the Greek tongue, their own ceasing to be vulgar unto them. All these, both in private and in their