THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY. 291
2. But in case this course fail, and no relief be afforded this wa_y, then the transposition of letters offers its assistance. Those who know any thing of this language know what alteration in the sense of words may be made by such a way of procedure ; frequently words of contrary senses, directly opposite, consist only of the same letters diversely placed. Every lexicon will supply men with instances that need not to be here repeated.
3. The points are taken into consideration ; and here bold men may even satisfy their curiosity. That word or those three letters -^m are instanced by Jerome to this purpose. (Horn. i.\-. 12.) As it may be pointed, it will afford eight several senses: ■'si is uerftum, and "ist h pestis ; as far distant from one another as life and death. Those letters in that order may be read with .,- and ^-r and --, and .. . and ... , The Jews give instances how by this means men may destroy the world. But,—
4. Suppose that this ground proves barren also, it is but going to an old trans- lation, the Septuagint, or Vulgar Latin, and where any word likes us, to consider Avhat Hebrew word answers unto it, and if it discover an agreement in any one letter, in figure or sound, with the word in that text, then to say that so they read in that copy ; yea, rather than fail, be the word as far different from what is read in the Bible as can be imagined, aver it to yield the more convenient sense, and a various lection is found out.
And these are the chief heads and springs of the criticisms on the Old Testa- ment, which, with so great a reputation of learning, men have boldly obtruded on us of late days. It is not imaginable what prejudice the sacred truth of the Scriptui-e, preserved by the infinite love and care of God, hath already suffered hereby; and what it may further suffer, for my part I cannot but tremble to think. Lay but these two principles together — namely, that the points are a late invention of some Judaical Rabbins (on which account there is no reason in the world thai we should be bound unto them), and that it is lawful to gather various lections by the help of translations, where there are no diversities in our present copies (which are owned in the Prolegomena to the Biblia Polj'glotta), — and for my part I must needs cry out Aos -ptoZ ittu, as not seeing any means of being de- livered from utter uncertainty in and about all sacred truth. Those who have more wisdom and learning, and are able to look through all the digladiations that are likely to ensue on these principles, I hope will rather take pains to instruct me, and such as I am, than be angry or offended with us that we are not so wise or learned as themselves. In the meantime, I desire those who are shaken in mind by any of the specious pretences of Cappellus and others, to consider the specimen given us of reconciling the difficulties that they lay as the ground of their conjectures, in the Miscellany Notes or Exercitations of the learned Mr Pococke, — as useful and learned a work as is extant in that kind, in so few sheets of paper. The dangerous and causeless attempts of men to rectify our present copies of the Bible, the reader may there also find discovered and confuted.
But we have not as yet done. Thei-e is a new invention of Cappellus greatly applauded amongst the men of these opinions. He tells us (Crit. Sacr. lib. vi. cap. 10): " Planum est omnem quae hodie est in terrarum orbe linguae Ilebraicae cognitionem servandam tandem esse et ascribendam Graecae ruv LXX. Sacrorum Bibliorum translationi." This is greedily taken up by Morinus (as nothing could be spoken more to his purpose), who also tells us that the learned prefacer to these Biblia Polyglotta is of the same judgment. (Morin. Praefat. ad opusc. Ilaebr. Samarit.) Hereupon he informs us, that in the translation of the Pentateuch he went for the meaning of sundry words unto Jerome and the translation of the LXX. But it is not unknown to these learned persons that Jerome, whom one of them makes his rule, tells us over and over, that notwithstanding the transia-
292 THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY.
tion of the LXX., he had his knowledge of the Hebrew tongue from the Hebrew itself, and the help of such Hebrews as he hired to his assistance. And [as] for Cappellus, is not that the Helena for which he contends, and in fact the only foundation of his sacred work of criticising on the Scripture, that there was a succession of learned men of the Jews at Tiberias until a hundred years after Jerome, who invented the points of the Hebrew Bible, and that not in an arbitrary manner, but according to the tradition they had received from them who spoke that language in its purity ? Shall these men be thought to have had the know- ledge of the Hebrew tongue from the translation of the LXX. ? Certainly they would not, then, have hated it so, as he informs us they did. But this thing is plainly ridiculous. The language gives us the knowledge of itself. Considering the helps that by Providence have been in all ages and at all times afforded there- unto, ever since the time wherein, Cappellus says, some knew it so well as to invent and affix the present punctuation, there hath been a succession of living or dead masters to further the knowledge of it. And this will not seem strange to them who have given us exact translations of the Persian and Ethiopic pieces of Scrip- ture. In the u.7ru.\ Xiy'o^'.ta. we are a little assisted by the LXX. The chiefest seeming help unto this tongue is from the Arabic.