Let us, then, a little, without prejudice or passion, consider who or what these men were, who are the supposed authors of this work : —
1. Men they were (if any such were) who had not the word of God committed to them in a peculiar manner, as their forefathers had of old, being no part of his church or people, but were only outwardly possessors of the letter, without just right or title to it, utterly un- interested in the promise of the communication of the Spirit, which is the great charter of the church's preservation of truth, Isa. lix. 21.
2. Men so remote from a right understanding of the luord, or the mind and will of God therein, that they were desperately engaged
882 INTEGRITY AND PURITY OF THE HEBREW AND GREEK TEXT.
to oppose his truth in the books which themselves enjoyed, in all matters of importance unto the glory of God or the good of their own souls, from the beginning to the ending; the foundation of whose religion was infidelity, and one of their chief fundamentals an op- position to the gospel.^ 3. Men under the special curse of God and his vengeance, upon the account of the blood of his dear Son. 4. Men all their days feeding themselves luith vain fables, and mis- chievous devices against the gospel, labouring to set up a new re- ligion under the name of the old, in despite of God ; so striving to wrestle it out with his curse to the utmost. 5. Men of a profound ignorance in all manner of learning and knowledge but only what concerned their own dunghill traditions f as appears in their stories, wherein they make Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, help Nebuchadnezzar against Jerusalem, with innumerable the like fopperies. 6. Men so addicted to such monstrous figments, as appears in their Talmuds, as their successors of after ages are ashamed of, and seek to palliate what tliey are able; yea, for the most part idolaters and magicians, as I shall evince. Now, I dare leave it to the judgment of any godly, prudent person, not addicted to parties and names of men, who is at all acquainted with the importance of the Hebrew vowels and ac- cents unto the right understanding of the Scripture, with what in- fluence their present fixation hath upon the literal sense we embrace, whether we need not very clear evidence and testimony, yea, un- deniable and unquestionable, to cast the rise and spring of them upon the invention of this sort of men.
Of all the fables that are in the Talmud I know none more in- credible than this story, that men who cannot, by any story or other record, be made to appear that they ever were in rerum natura, — such men as we have described, obscure, unobserved, not taken notice of by any learned man, Jew or Christian, — should in a time of deep ignorance, in the place where they lived, amongst a people wholly addicted to monstrous fables, themselves blinded under the curse of God, find out so great, so excellent a work, of such unspeakable use- fulness, not once advising with the men of their own profession and religion, who then flourished in great abundance at Babylon and the places adjacent, and impose it on all the world (that receive the Scriptures), and have every tittle of their work received, without any opposition or question from any person or persons, of any principle whatever; yea, so as to have their invention made the constant rule of all following expositions, comments, and interpretations. Credat Apella.
To draw, then, to the close of this discourse, I must crave liberty
1 Fundament, nonum. apud Maimon. proefat. ad Perck. Chelek. p. 175, edit. Roc. » Shobet Jebuda, p. 40.
OKIGIN OF THE HEBREW POINTS. S83
to profess that if I could be thoroughly convinced that the present Hebrew punctuation were the figment and invention of these men, I should labour to the utmost to have it utterly taken away out of the Bible, nor should I (in its present station) make use of it any more. What use such an invention might be of under catholic rules, in a way of grammar, I shall not dispute ; but to have it placed in the Bible as so great a part of the word of God is not tolerable. But blessed be God, things are not as yet come to that pass ! I shall only add, that whereas some of the most eminently learned and exei'cised persons in all the learning and antiquity of the Jews that these latter ages have produced, have appeared in the confutation of this fancy of the invention of the points by some post-Talmudical Masoretes, I am sorry their respect to the Rabbins hath kept them from the ma- nagement of this consideration, which is to me of so great importance- To what I have spoken I shall add the words of learned Dr Light- foot, in his late Centuria Chorograph., which came to my hands since the finishing of this discourse, cap. Ixxxi. p. 146: " Sitnt qui punctata Biblia credunt a sapientibus Tiberiensibus " (he means Elias only, for other Jews of this opinion there are none). " Ego im- pudentiam Judseorum, qui fabulam invenerunt, non miror; Christi- anorum credulitatem miror, qui applaudunt. Recognosce (quaeso) nomina Tiberiensium a sita ilUc primum academia ad earn expiran- tem, et quidnam tandem invenies nisi genus hominum prae Phari- saismo insaniens, traditionibus fascinans et fascinatum, caecum, va- frum, delirum; ignoscant, si dicam magicum et monstrosum? Ad opus tam divinum homines quam ineptos, quam stolidos! Perlege Talmud Hierosolymitanum, et nota qualiter illic se habeant K Juda, R. Chamnath, Z. Judan, K Hoshaia, R. Chaija Rubba, R. Chaija Bar Ba, R. Jochanan, reliquique inter Tiberienses grandissimi doc- tores; quam serio nihil agunt; quam pueriliter seria; quanta in ipso- rum disputationibus vafrities, spuma, venenum, fumus, nihil; et si punctata fuisse Biblia in istiusmodi schola potes credere, crede et omnia Talmudica. Opus Spiritus Sancti sapit punctatio Bibliorum, non opus hominum perditorum, excsecatorum, araentium.'' In the words of this learned person there is the sum of what I am plead- ing for. Saith he, " I do not admire the Jews' impudence, who found out that fable; I admire Christians' credulity, who applaud it. Recount, I pray, the names of the Tiberians from the first founda- tion of a university there to the expiring thereof, and what do you find but a sort of men being mad with (or above) the Pharisees, be- witching and bewitched with traditions, blind, crafty, raging; par- don me if I say magical and monstrous? What fools, what sots, as to such a divine work! Read over the Talmud of Jerusalem; con- sider how R. Juda, R. Chamnath, Z. Judan, R. Hoshaia, R. Chaija