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O rem ridiculam, Cato & jocosam!

Ridiculous only would such assertions be, if their inAuence stopped at the absurd manner of pronouncing a dead language; but since they directly tend to make the language of a great part of God's Revelation, and consequently this Revelation itself, ridiculous, they deserve a inuch severer name, Well then, let the Hebrew have' the same vowels as almost all other languages: but how,' saith an objector, shall we pronounce Hebrew syllables,' and even words, (and many such there are) wherein none of the vowels above mentioned appear? answer, with Dr. Robertson, supply in every such syllable a short cowel, no matter which, for all vowels when pronounced short and quick are nearly the same: Thus call 727, đêbêr or dûbâr, ps, péquéd, or pâquâd, &c. And as you pronounce the supplied vowels short, so to distinguish them from the textual vowels pronounce these latter always long. Thus may you read and pronounce dis-. tintly the Hebrew Bible from the beginning to the end.

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It is certain that the antient Hebrews, who, we have proved, had not the points, must have used some such ́ method of reading, and so probably did all the * oriental nations, till after the time of Mahomet.

Thus much for reading or pronouncing the Hebrew language without the vowel points. That it may also be construed and understood without their aid is indisputable because many actually do thus understand and are ableto construe it. And that this method of learning Hebrew is, beyond all comparison, casier than the rabbinical one, is no less certain. The Grammar of the Hebrew language without points, is of all others the most simple, easy, and concise. The grammatical distinctions are in the textual letters themselves. The various forms and deflections of nouns and verbs are in most cases absolutely determined by the letters of the word itself compared with the con-. text. d I can assure your correspondent, and am ready to prove it in any particular instance, that there; is not a single ambiguous expression in the Hebrew Bible,

For neither the antient Arabic, Syriac, Chaldee, nor Persic, had, any cowel points, and the Samaritan has none to this day. See Walton's Proleg. III. § 48.

Vol. VIII. Churchm. Mag. April 1805. M m

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but the sense of it may be determined in a muchbetter and surer manner than by the points. I mean by close attention to the context, by consulting the antient versions, and especially by carefully examining, in a concordance, the use and sense of the expression in other texts. This method will generally lead to the true sense of a dubious passage; at least, more frequently than it can be attained in any antient dead language. Whereas by confining oneself to the points, a person is tied down to the tra ditional interpretation of Jewish Rabbins, the descendants and successors of those who had, through their traditions, made the Word of God of none effect in our Saviour's time. But I repeat my appeal to fact and experience, and of my own knowledge affirm, that several persons have in a few weeks been taught the grammatical rudiments of the Hebrew tongue without points, so as to be able to proceed in reading the original Scriptures without further assistance. And there are others who hardly know, and perhaps never knew anything of the points, who yet are in truth great proficients, yea the greatest critics and masters in the sacred language now living. Should any of your readers desire more particular information on this, which you justly call an interesting question, I would recommend to their perusal Bishop Walton's Prolegomena, ch. iii. or Dupin's discours preliminaire sur la Bible, liv. i. ch. iv. § 2. or Masclef's nova grammatica argumenta, ch. ii. at the end of the second volume: and I think they can hardly fail of meeting with ample satisfaction, even without having recourse to the more diffuse treatises of Capellus and Morinus.›.

J. P.

MR. EVANSON to E. P.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCHMAN'S

A

SIR,

FTER

MAGAZINE.

very attentively perusing your reply to my last in the Number of this Magazine for January, I perfectly agree with you, that it is highly improbable we shall either of us convince the other, where that im

portant

portant object religious truth is to be found, for which we both profess to entertain the greatest regard. I also think with you, that temperate, liberal discussions of this natúre," by contributing to elicit truth, may be serviceable to others." And with a view to conduce, on my part, to so desirable an end, I beg once more of the Editor, to be indulged with the liberty of stating a few short observations upon the chief arguments you have urged.

Did the Athanasian creed consist of only two proposi tions, it would certainly be inconsistent to call it both unintelligible and contradictory. But composed, as it is, of a long series of different propositions, it is surely very possible that some of them may be unintelligible, and others contradictory to each other; which appears to me to be actually the case.'

In your paragraph on the subject of blasphemy, you are pleased to blame me for not making a distinction between the idolatry of heathens, and the idolatry of those who call themselves Christians, because the idolatry of the latter is not" paid to wood and stone, independently of any reference to the true God." But neither, Sir, was the idolatry of the former. There never yet existed a nation so utterly devoid of reason as to imagine the idols they themselves made, and before which they wor shipped, to be the powers who governed the world, and controlled the affairs of men; but merely visible representatives of that power, or those powers which they believed to reside in Heaven above them. Cælo tonantem credidimus Jovem regnare, says Horace, not the image of Jupiter in the capitol. The author of the Epistle to the Romans indeed (not St Paul) "charges the heathens, who, though they knew God, glorified him not as God, with changing the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image like to corruptible men, &c. But both you and I know, Sir, that the idolatry of the heathen was actually owing to their ignorance of the one only true God, and of those attributes by which alone men can form any ra tional idea of his nature. Accordingly the true St. Paul when he zealously endeavoured to convert the Athenians from idolatry to the worship of the true God, ascribed their idolatrous devotions solely to their not knowing the only proper object of them; and told them, that the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent, &c." M m 2 You

You scem, Sir, to think, that the Church of Rome is guilty of no other idolatry, than the invocation of the Saints to intercede for thein with the Deity. And since that very circumstance shews, that they do not pray to them as Gods; such invocation, however irrational and unjustifiable, is by no means the idolatry so accurately defined, and so strictly forbidden in the second commandment of the Jewish Decalogue, nor consequently that blasphemous mode of worship which is ascribed in the prophecies of Scripture to the predicted apostate Church. But when she worships before the figure of a mortal man, dying or dead upon the cross, as a just and proper representation of "God who made the world and all things therein," she then is guilty of "changing the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man." The obvious inferences I leave to the reflections of your own mind."

To discuss properly the nature of probable and demonstrative evidence, would require more room than could be allowed in a publication of this kind. I therefore wave it for the present; observing only, that I readily acknowledge the profession of belief in the Christian religion of different men to be made upon very different degrees of assurance; and by the generality without any satisfactory evidence at all. But I find my mental faculties so cted, that nothing short of clear demonstration of its truth and divine authority, could ever have produced in my mind, that full conviction which, in my estimation, can alone be justly denominated rational befief. That the Sun will rise to-morrow morning," you tell us is only a probability, And so it is to the mere philosopher, who is unconvinced of the existence of a God, or at least of the truth and certainty of any revelation of his will having proceeded from him; but to him who perceives demonstrative evidence of both, and who is convinced that the decrces of the omnipotent cannot fail of being accomplished; and who therefore with David regards the testimonies of God as sure, most sure, Ps. 19, and 93, that the sun will rise to-morrow is as certain, as that it has risen to day. Because the saine first, cause of all things, by whose will alone the sun began to shine, hath declared it to be his will, that the earth shall remain, if not for ever, at least long enough to experience many changes in the moral state of its inhabitants, which are still far distant, and also, that " so

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long as the earth remaineth, day and night, that is, the rising and setting of the sun shall not cease, Gen. viii, 22. Jer. xxxiii. 20 and 25.

As I consider it of great importance, to ascertain the true date of the apocalypse, I referred to 1 Cor. xv. 52. as affording irrefragable proof in the words trumpet, last trumpet, and he shall sound the trumpet, that it must have been written before that epistle of Paul. But you avoid replying to my remarks upon them; and only speak in general terms of "many passages of the Old Testament, &c." without specifying any one. So that it is not possible to judge whether there be any, or what degree of similarity between the case I have stated, and any one of those to which you may allude.

It was no small surprise to me to find from your next paragraph, that when you undertook to review my Reflections, &c. you could have read it with so very little attention, as to think the explication I have there given of the predictions of the apocalypse, cannot be admitted as just and true, or rejected as erroneous and false, for fifty or sixty years to come. The certainty of the miraculous appearance of Jesus Christ to assume his promised kingdom, and to destroy the whole apostate church; the resurrection of the just; and the conversion of all the nations within the limits of Daniel's four monarchies to the true and rational religion of the new, covenant of the Gospel; in consequence of the effects produced by so wonderful, supernatural a completion of these predictions of Daniel and John, can indeed be proved only by those events taking place at the period assig..ed by both those prophets; and which, according to their data, cannot now be more than about that number of years distant. But I have given explanations of the accomplish ment of a long series of other predictions from the commencement of the wars of the Jews to the late extraor dinary, insurrections and revolutions in so many of the European states, some in common with other commentators, others, as of the seven vials peculiar to myself. And if they are erroneous, any man acquainted with the usual sense of figurative language, and with the history of Christendom within these eras, may very easily prove them to be so, by comparing them with the terms of the predictions themselves, and with the corresponding historical occurrences to which I have referred them. But if upon such a comparison they are, found to be accu rately

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