The work of Cappellus remained unanswered, and worked powerfully until 1648. In the meantime the Roman Catholic Frenchman, Morinus, taking the same position as Cappellus, pressed it in order to show the need of Church authority and tradition. This greatly complicated the discussion by making the view a basis for an attack on the Protestant position. The younger Buxtorf was stirred up to maintain the traditional Rabbinical position against Cappellus. The three universities of Sedan, Geneva, and Leyden were so aroused against Cappellus that they refused to allow the publication of his great work, Critica Sacra, which, however, appeared in 1650, the first of a series of corresponding productions.3 Heidegger and Turretine rallied the universities of Zurich, Geneva, and Basle to the Zurich Consensus, which was adopted in 1675, against all the distinguishing doctrines of the school of Saumur, and the more liberal type of Calvinism, asserting for the first and only time in the symbols of any Christian communion the doctrine of verbal inspiration, together with the inspiration of accents and points.

Thus the formal principle of Protestantism was straitened, and its vital power destroyed by the erection of dogmatic barriers against Biblical Criticism. "They forgot that they by this standpoint again made Christian faith entirely dependent on tradition; yes, with respect to the Old Testament, on the synagogue."

The controversy between Brian Walton and John Owen is instructive just here. John Owen had prepared a tract in which he takes this position: "Nor is it enough to satisfy us that the doctrines mentioned are preserved entire; every tittle and iota in the Word of God must come under our consideration, as being as such from God." 6

Before the tract was issued he was confronted by the prolegomena to Walton's Biblia Polyglotta, which, he perceived,

1 Exercitationes biblica, 1633.

2 Tract. de punct. vocal. et accent. in libr. V., T., heb. origine antiq., 1648.

3 See Tholuck, Akadem. Leben, II. p. 332.

* Dorner, Gesch. Prot. Theologie, p. 451.

5 The Divine Original, Authority, and Self-evidencing Light and Purity of the Scriptures.

Works, XVI. p. 303.

undermined his theory of inspiration; and he therefore added an appendix, in which he maintains that:

"The Scriptures of the Old and New Testament were immediately and entirely given out by God himself, His mind being in them represented unto us without the least interveniency of such mediums and ways as were capable of giving change or alteration to the least iota or syllable.""

1

Brian Walton replies to him :

"For when at the beginning of the Reformation, divers questions arose about the Scriptures and the Church; the Romanists observing that the punctuation of the Hebrew text was an invention of the Masorites, they thereupon inferred that the text without the points might be taken in divers senses, and that none was tyed to the reading of the Rabbins, and therefore concluded that the Scripture is ambiguous and doubtful without the interpretation and testimony of the Church, so that all must flee to the authority of the Church and depend upon her for the true sense and meaning of the Scriptures. On the other side, some Protestants, fearing that some advantage might be given to the Romanists by this concession, and not considering how the certainty of the Scriptures might well be maintained though the Text were unpointed, instead of denying the consequence, which they might well have done, thought fit rather to deny the assumption, and to maintain that the points were of Divine original, whereby they involved themselves in extreme labyrinths, engaging themselves in defence of that which might be easily proved to be false, and thereby wronged the cause which they seemed to defend. Others, therefore, of more learning and judgment knowing that this position of the divine original of the points could not be made good; and that the truth needed not the patronage of an untruth, would not engage themselves therein, but granted it to be true, that the points were invented by the Rabbins, yet denied the consequence, maintaining, notwithstanding, that the reading and sense of the text might be certain without punctuation, and that therefore the Scriptures did not at all depend upon the authority of the Church and of this judgment were the chief Protestant Divines, and greatest linguists that then were, or have been since in the Christian World, such as I named before; Luther, Zwinglius, Calvin, Beza, Musculus, Brentius, Pellicane, Oecolampadius, Mercer, Piscator, P. Phagius, Dru

1 Of the Integrity and Purity of the Hebrew Text of the Scriptures, with Considerations of the Prolegomena and Appendix to the Late " Biblia Polyglotta," Oxford, 1659.

sius, Schindler, Martinius, Scaliger, De Dieu, Casaubon, Erpenius, Sixt. Amana, Jac. and Ludov. Capellus, Grotius, etc. among ourselves, Archbishop Ussher, Bishop Prideaux, Mr. Mead, Mr. Selden, and innumerable others, whom I forbear to name, who conceived it would nothing disadvantage the cause, to yield that proposition, for that they could still make it good, that the Scripture was in itself a sufficient and certain rule for faith and life, not depending upon any human authority to support it."1

We have quoted this extract at length for the light it casts upon the struggle of criticism at the time. John Owen, honoured as a preacher and dogmatic writer, but certainly no exegete, had spun a theory of inspiration after the a priori scholastic method, and with it did battle against the great Polyglot. It was a Quixotic attempt, and resulted in ridiculous failure. His dogma is crushed as a shell in the grasp of a giant. The indignation of Walton burns hot against this wanton and unreasoning attack. But he consoled himself with the opening reflection that Origen's Hexapla, Jerome's Vulgate, the Complutensian Polyglot, Erasmus' Greek Testament, the Antwerp and Paris Polyglots, had all in turn been assailed by those whose theories and dogmas had been threatened or overturned by a scholarly induction of facts..

The theory of the scholastics prevailed but for a brief period in Switzerland, where it was overthrown by the reaction under the leadership of the younger Turretine. The theory of John Owen did not influence the divines who under the authority of the British Parliament constructed the Westminster Confession of Faith:

"In fact, it was not till several years after the Confession was completed, and the star of Owen was in the ascendant, that under the spell of a genius and learning only second to Calvin, English Puritanism so generally identified itself with what is termed his less liberal view." 2

Owen's type of theology worked in the doctrine of inspiration, as well as in other dogmas, to the detriment of the simpler and more evangelical Westminster theology; and in the latter

1 The Considerator Considered, London, 1659, pp. 220 seq.

2 Mitchell, Minutes of Westminster Assembly, p. xx.

Q

part of the seventeenth century gave Puritan theology a scholastic type which it did not possess before. But it did not prevent such representative Presbyterians as Matthew Poole, Edmund Calamy, and the Cambridge men, with Baxter, from taking the more scholarly position. The critics of the Reformed Church produced masterpieces of biblical learning, which have been the pride and boast of the Reformed Churches to the present. Like Cappellus, they delighted in the name critical, and were not afraid of it. John Pearson, Anton Scattergood, Henry Gouldman, and Richard Pearson,1 and above all Matthew Poole, published critical works of great and abiding merit.2

III. TEXTUAL CRITICISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND.

NINETEENTH CENTURIES

Biblical Criticism continued in England till the midst of the eighteenth century. Mill issued his critical New Testament in 1707, the fruit of great industry, and was assailed by unthinking men who preferred pious ignorance to a correct New Testament.3 But Richard Bentley espoused the cause of his friend with invincible arguments, and he himself spent many years in the collection of manuscripts. He died leaving his magnificent work incomplete, and his plans to be carried out by foreign scholars.

For "

now original research in the science of Biblical Criticism, so far as the New Testament is concerned, seems to have left the shores of England to return no more for upwards of a century; and we must look to Germany if we wish to trace the further progress of investigations which our countrymen had so auspiciously begun.” 4

Bishop Lowth did for the Old Testament what Bentley did for the New. In his works 5 he called the attention of scholars to the necessity of emendation of the Massoretic text, and

1 Critici Sacri, 9 vols. folio, 1660.

2 Synopsis Criticorum, 5 vols. folio, 1669.

Scrivener, Introduction to the Criticism of the N. T., 2d ed. 1874, p. 400.

4 Scrivener in l. c., p. 402.

De Sacra Poesi Hebræorum, 1753, and Isaiah: A New Translation, with a Preliminary Dissertation and Notes, 1778, 2d ed., 1779.

encouraged Kennicott to collate the manuscripts of the Old Testament, which he did, publishing the result in a monumental work in 1776-1780.1 This was preceded by an introductory work in 1753-1759.2

Bishop Lowth, with his fine æsthetic sense and insight into the principles of Hebrew poetry, saw and stated the truth:

"If it be asked, what then is the real condition of the present Hebrew Text; and of what sort, and in what number, are the mistakes which we must acknowledge to be found in it: it is answered, that the condition of the Hebrew Text is such, as from the nature of the thing, the antiquity of the writings themselves, the want of due care, or critical skill (in which latter at least the Jews have been exceedingly deficient), might in all reason have been expected, that the mistakes are frequent, and of various kinds; of letters, words, and sentences; by variation, omission, transposition; such as often injure the beauty and elegance, embarrass the construction, alter or obscure the sense, and sometimes render it quite unintelligible. If it be objected that a concession so large as this is, tends to invalidate the authority of Scripture; that it gives up in effect the certainty and authenticity of the doctrines contained in it, and exposes our religion naked and defenceless to the assaults of its enemies: this, I think, is a vain and groundless apprehension. . . . Important and fundamental doctrines do not wholly depend on single passages; and universal harmony runs through the Holy Scriptures; the parts mutually support each other, and supply one another's deficiencies. and obscurities. Superficial damages and partial defects may greatly diminish the beauty of the edifice, without injuring its strength and bringing on utter ruin and destruction.3

After this splendid beginning, Old Testament criticism followed its New Testament sister to the continent of Europe and remained absent until our own day.

On the continent the work of Mill was carried on by J. A. Bengel, J. C. Wetstein, J. J. Griesbach, J. M. A. Scholz,"

1 Vetus Test. Heb. cum var. lectionibus, 2 Tom., Oxford.

2 The State of the Printed Hebrew Text of the Old Testament considered, 2 vols. 8vo, Oxford.

8 Lowth, Isaiah, 2d ed., London, 1779, pp. lix., lx.

Prodromus, N. T. Gr., 1725. Novum Test., 1734.

5 New Test. Gr. cum lectionibus variantibus Codicum, etc., Amst., 1751-1752. 6 Symbola Criticæ, 2 Tom., 1785-1793.

7 Bib. krit Reise Leipzig, 1823; N.T. Græce, 2 Bd., Leipzig, 1830-1836.