The Jews have a common saying among them, — that to alter one letter of the laio is no less sin than to set the whole woidd on fire; and shall we think that in writing it they took no more care than a man would do in writing out Aristotle or Plato, who for a very little portion of the world would willingly have done his endeavour to get both their works out of it? Considering that the word to be transcribed was, every / wra and tittle of it, the word of the great God ; that that which was written, and as written, was proposed as his, as from him ; that if any failings were made, innumerable eyes of men,
856 INTEGraTY and PUPJTY of the HEBREW AND GREEK TEXT,
owning their eternal concernment to lie in that word, were open upon it to discover it, and thousands of copies were extant to try it by; and all this known unto and confessed by every one that undertook this work,-^it is no hard matter to prove their care and diligence to have outoone that of other common scribes of heathen authors. The truth is, they are prodigious things that are related of the exact diligence and reverential care of the ancient Jews in this work, especially when they intrusted a copy to be a rule for the trial and standard of other private copies. Maimonides in min "iQD niDPn, chap. viii. 3, 4, tells us that Ben Asher spent many years in the careful, exact writing out of the Bible. Let any man consider the twenty things which they affirm to profane a book or copy, and this will further appear. They are repeated by Rabbi Moses, Tractat. de Libro Legis. cap. x. One of them is, nnH mi< 1^''SX "iDHC', " If but one letter be wantino^;" and another, "If but one letter be redundant." Of which more shall be spoken if occasion be offered.
Even among the heathen, we will scarce think that the Roman pontifices, going solemnly to transcribe the Sibyls' verses, would do it either negligently or treacherously, or alter one tittle from what they found written ; and shall we entertain such thoughts of them who knew they had to do with the living God, and that in and about that which is dearer to Him than all the world besides? Let men, then, clamour as they please, and cry out of all men as ignorant and stupid which will not grant the corruptions of the Old Testament which they plead for, which is the way of Morinus; or let them pro- pose their own conjectures of the ways of the entrance of the mis- takes that they pretend are crept into the original copies, with their remedies, wliich is the way of Cappellus; we shall acknowledge nothing of this nature but what they can prove by undeniable and irrefragalile instances, — which, as to any thing as yet done by them or those that follow in their footsteps, appears upon the matter to be nothing at all. To this purpose take our sense in the words of a very learned man: "Ut in iis libris qui sine vocalibus conscripti sunt, certum constantemque exemplarium omnium, turn excusarum scriptionem similemque omnino comperimus, sic in omnibus etiam iis quibus puncta sunt addita, non aliam cuipiam nee discrepantem aliis punctationem observavimus; nee quisquam est qui ullo in loco diversa lectionis Hebraicse exemplaria ab iis quaj circumferuntur, vidisse se asserat, modo grammaticam rationem observatam dicat. Et quidem Dei consilio ac voluntate factum putamus, ut cum magna Groscorum Latinorumque fere omnium ejusdem auctoris exempla- rium, ac pra3sertim manuscriptorum pluribus in locis varietas depre- hendatur, magna tamen in omnibus Hebraicis, qusecunque nostro sssculo iuveniuntur, Bibliis, scriptionis gequalitas, similitude atque
OF THE PURITY OF THE ORIGINALS. S57
constantia servetur quocunque modo scripta ilia sint, sive solis con- sonantibus constent, sive punctis etiam instructa visantur/' Arias Montan. prgefat. ad Biblia Interlin. de Varia Hebraicorum Librorum Scriptione et Lectione.
It can, then, with no colour of ^probability be asserted^ (which yet I find some learned men too free iu granting), namel}', that there hath the same fate attended the Scripture in its transcription as hath done other books. Let me say without offence, this imagina- tion, asserted on deliberation, seems to me to border on atheism. Surely the promise of God for the preservation of his word, with his love and care of his church, of whose faith and obedience that word of his is the only rule, requires other thoughts at our hands.
Thirdly, We add, that the whole Scripture, entire as given out from God, without any loss, is preserved iu the copies of the origi- nals yet remaining ; what varieties there are among the copies them- selves shall be afterward declared. In them all, we say, is every letter and tittle of the word. These copies, we say, are the rule, standard, and touchstone of all translations, ancient or modern, by which they are in all things to be examined, ti'ied, corrected, amended; and themselves only by themselves. Translations contain the word of God, and are the word of God, perfectly or imperfectly, according as they express the words, sense, and meaning of those originals. To advance any, all translations concurring, into an equality with the originals,— so to set them by it as to set them up with it on even terms, — much more to propose and use them as means of castigating, amending, altering any thing in them, gathering various lections by them, is to set up an altar of our own by the altar of God, and to make equal the wisdom, care, skill, and diligence of men, with the wisdom, care, and providence of God himself. It is a foolish conjec- ture of Morinus, from some words of Epiphanius, that Origen in his Octapla placed the translation of the LXX. in the midst, to be the rule of all the rest, even of the Hebrew itself, that was to be re- gulated and amended by it: " Media igitur omnium catholica editio collocata erat, ut ad earn Hebrsea cseteraeque editiones exigerentur et emendarentur," Exercit. lib. i. cap. iii. p. 15. The truth is, he placed the Hebrew, iu Hebrew characters, in the first place, as the rule and standard of all the rest; the same in Greek characters in the next place; then that of Aquila; then that of Symmachus; after which, in the fifth place, followed that of the LXX., mixed with that of Theo- dotion.