2. As to Hebrew punctuation, Owen held the points to be pai't of Scripture, and as sacred and ancient as the other elements of the text. Here he may have erred, but it was in honourable company,— with the Buxtorfs, Gerard, Glass, Voet, Flacius Illyricus, ■ Lightfoot, Leusden, and others. Cappell, in 1624, though wrong on the question of criti- cism, adopted the opinions of a learned Jew, Elias Levita, who wrote in 1520, and of some Jewish and Christian writers even before the days of Levita, and first took strong ground in denying the antiquity of the Hebrew points, and tracing them to the school of the Masoretes. Still, the question was not determined. Schultens, in 1737, followed by Michaelis, adopted an intermediate course, contending that some points had been in use from the earliest ages of the language. Eichhorn and Gesenius were inclined to be- lieve in the existence of some points before the Talmud and the days of Jerome. It was only in 1830 that Hupfeld is considered to have set the question at rest, by proving the Masoretic punctuation to have been unknown both to the authors of the Talmud and to Jerome. It is a question which it has taken the discussion of centuries to settle, and some may even yet be disposed to think that all the difficulties connected with Hupfeld's view are not eliminated from it, and that some apparatus corresponding to the points must have been needed to secure uniformity in Hebrew pronunciation during successive ages, and in all parts of the world, wherever in ancient times there were Jews to speak their own tongue or read their own Scriptures.
Owen erred in various matters of detail; bixt the same allegation, though not to the same extent, might be made respecting Walton, who advanced opinions in the contro- versy which no modern scholar would endorse with his sanction. Owen erred also in betraying a nervous sensitiveness, lest an imposing array of various readings should in- validate the authority of the sacred text. The spirit in which Walton replied, how- ever, cannot be justified,— transmuting the hypothetical reasonings of his adversary into positive averments, and applying to the Polyglott what he wrote against Bcllarmine, Leo Gastrins, Morin, and Cappell, whose principles of criticism were notoriously un-
THE OCCASION OF THIS DISCOUESE. S47
sound and dangerous. Owen begins the following treatise by stating, that after he had finished but before he had sent off the manuscript of the preceding treatise " On the Original of Scripture," the London Polyglott had reached him. " Palpable untruth! " exclaimed Walton ; " for in that treatise there are two references to the Polyglott; " — as if they could not have been inserted after he had seen it, the more especially as on seeing it Owen declares tliat he took time for consideration. It is to be wished that he had taken more time, and been more guarded, and less rash on this occasion. He would have been less open in minor details to the rebukes of his leai'ned and haughty anta- gonist ; with whom, after all, we cannot help feeling some degree of sympathy, in his fears lest the rude breath of jealous criticism should scorch the laurel due to his brow for devising and completing that stupendous monument of enterprise, learning, and in- dusti-y,— the Biblia Sacra Polyglotta Londini.— Ed.
CHAPTER I.
The occasion of this discourse — The danger of supposing corruptions in the origi- nals of the Scripture — The great usefulness of the Biblia Polyglotta — The grounds of the ensuing animadversions — The assertions proposed to be vin- dicated laid down — Their weight and importance — Sundry principles in the Prolegomena prejudicial to the truth contended for laid down — Those principles formerly asserted by others — Reasons of the opposition made to them.
When this whole little precedent treatise^ was finished and ready to be given out unto the stationer, there came to my hands the Prole- gomena and ApjDendix to the Biblia Polyglotta lately published. Upon the first sight of that volume, I was somewhat startled with that bulky collection of various readings which the appendix tenders to the view of every one that doth but cast an eye upon it. Within a while after, I found that others also, men of learning and judgment, had apprehensions of that work not unlike those which my own thoughts had suggested unto me. Afterward, considering what I had written about the providence of God in the preservation of the original copies of the Scripture in the foregoing discourse, fearing lest, from that great appearance of variations in the original copies, and those of all the translations, published with so great care and diligence, there might some unconquerable objections against the truth of what I had asserted be educed, I judged it necessary to stop the progress of those thoughts until I could get time to look through the Appendix and the various lections in that great volume exhibited unto us, with the grounds and reasons of them in the Pro- legomena. Having now discharged that task and (as things were stated) duty, I shall crave leave to deliver my thoughts to some things contained in them, which possibly men of perverse minds may wrest to the prejudice of my former assertions, — to the prejudice of ' The treatise " Of the Divine Original, etc., of the Sci'iptures."