I'he modus operandi of the Catholic controversialists caused great alarm among the defenders of Protestant- ism, who now commenced beating a retreat. They de- clared that the points were put to the text by the proph- ets themselves, and that to say otherwise was heathenish and popish. Thus the charge of Gregorj' Martin (q. v.), in his work entitled A Discovery of the Manifold Cor- ruptions of the Holy Scriptures by the Heretics of our Bays, that Protestants, in their versions, follow the He- brew vowels, which were of recent origin, was rebut- ted by Fulke, in his Defence of the Sincere and True Translations if the Holy Scriptures into the English Tongue, against the Manifold Cavils, Frivolous Quarrels, and inrpudent Slanders of Gregory Martin, one of the Readers of I'opish Divinity in the Traitorous Seminary of Rheitns (Lond. 1583; Parker Society ed. Cambridge, 1843), p. 578, with the declaration that '-seeing our Sav- iour hath promised that never a particle of the law shall perish, we may understand the same also of the proph-
VOWEL-POINTS
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VOWEL-POINTS
ets, who have not received the vowels of the later Jews, but even of the projihets themselves, howsoever that heathenish opinion pleaseth you and other papists."
Hitherto, both Catholics and I'rotestants chiefly re- lied upon abusing; each other. None of them thought of examining Levita's artjuments, or of corroborating or refuting his statements. To be or not to be, that was the (juestion on both sides, and. besides, neither of the two parties had sufficient Talniudical learning and critical tact. The first attempt to meet Levita's book was made, as has already been stated above, by the learned Azariah de' Kossi, in 157-1-75, in ch. lix, pt. iii, of his work The Light of the A'l/es {Meor Enuim [Man- tua, 1574-75; Vienna, 1829J), wherein he tried to prove the anticpiity of the vowel-points from the ZoAar and the Talmud.
With weapons like these, the Protestants now opened a new campaign, under the leadership of Buxtorf, the father (died KJill). with a display of Rabbinical bayo- nets. The antiquity and divinity of the vowel-points, which were formerly abandoned, were now defended; and in his Tiberiits sire Commentarius Masorethicus (Basle, 1620) Buxtorf made use of De' Rossi's argu- ments. Feeble as these arguments were, they never- theless found many supporters, who ranged themselves under the leadership of Buxtorf, who, however, was not destined to carry everything before him in his first battle against Levita. The Buxtorf-de'-Kossi alliance produced a counter-alliance, beaded by Louis Cappel (q. v.). Before Cap[)el pidjlished his treatise, he sent it in manuscript to Buxtorf for examination, who re- turned it with the request that it might not be printed. He then sent it to Erpenius. who was so convinced bj' its arguments and learning that, without the sanction of the author, he printed it at Leyden, under the title The Mysteri) of the Poinf.i Unveiled {A rcanum Piinctalio- nis Revelutum [Leyd. 1(V2-1 ; afterwards reprinted by his son, Amsterd. 1689, fol.]).
A time of anxious suspense followed the publication of this anonymous work, during which time father Mo- rinus published his Biblical Exercitations, as already in- dicated above. Morinus, as well as Cappel, denied the antiquity of the vowel-points, but each had a different aim in view; for while Cappel contended against the authority of Rabbinical tradition, Morinus contended in behalf of Romish tradition, placing the same above the Scriptures, which he compared "to a mere nose of wax, to be turned any way," to prove thereby the ne- cessity of one infallible interpretation. Albert Pighius, a mathematician and controversialist (born in 1490, and died in 1542), in his ]lier<irch. Eccles. Assertio (ed. 1538), iii, 3, 80, makes a similar statement : " Sunt enim illse (Scriptures), ut non minus vere quam festive dixit quidam, velut nasus cereus, qui se horsum, illorsum, et in quam volueris partem, trahi, retrahi, fingique facile permittit." When Morinus's work was published, Cap- pel felt rather uncomfortable at this association, and, having been made known to the public as the author of the Arcannm by Cocceins (in his De duohus Tulmu- dis Titulis Sanhedrim et Maccolh), Cap]iel now open- ly declared himself as the author in the preface to the A nimadrersio ad Noram Daridis Li/rum (ed. Go- marus). The success which had followed the publica- tion of the Arcamim was. indeed, very great. Its im- mense erudition, conclusive reasoning, and overpower- ing arguments soon convinced the most sceptical schol- ars of the late origin of the vowel-points. The follow- ers of Buxtorf were for a considerable time doomed to almost fatal inaction, till at last, after a silence of four- and-twenty years, Buxtorf, the son, who succeeded his father, published, in 1648, a rejdy to Cappel, entitled Tractatus de Punctorum Vocalium et Accentuum in Li- bris Veteris Testamenti Ilebraicis Origine, A ntiqiiitate et Atithoritate, Oppositiis Arcana Puuctationis Revelato Ludovici Capelli. Cappel answered in a rejoinder en- titled VindicicB Arcani Punctatiouis (published bv his son in 1689).
The consequence of this controversy was, that Prot- estant Christendom everywhere was divided into two hostile camps, vowellists and anti-vowellists. Soon the controversy was transplanted to England, where Levita and Cappel were represented by Walton, w bile De' Rossi and Buxtorf were represented by Lightfoot and Owen. Walton, in his prolegomena to the Loiuion Polyglot {I'ro- legom. iii, 38-56), speaks at great length concerning the controversy, and concludes that the controversy " is only about the present points, in regard to their forms, not of their force and signification." Different entirely was the position of Lightfoot. This learned Hebraist thought that his dicta would be quite sufficient to silence his opponents, and in his Centuiia Chvi-oyraphica,c.H\,h(i comes to the conclusion: "Opus Spiritus Sancti sapit punctatio Bibliorum, non opus homimim perditorum, excoecatorum, amentium." This dogmatic and abusive assertion of Lightfoot stimulated Dr. Owen to issue his attack on Walton's Polyglot and the anti-vowellists, and his defence of the vowel points, with the exception of the enilorsement and elaboration of Lightfoot'sdiatrilie, is simply made up of De'-Rossi- Buxtorf arguments greatly diluted (coinp. his Inteyriiy and Puritg of the Hebrew and Greek Text of the Scriptures, etc. [Lond. 1659]; iv, 447 sq. of his collected works [Lond. 1823J). Within twelve months \^'alton published a reph*, the Considerator Considered (Lond. 1659; reprinted in the second volume of Todtl's Memoirs of the Life and Writ- ings of Bishop Walton [Lond. 1821]), which contains ad- ditional and valuable contributions to the literature of this controversy.