Animadversions on a treatise entitled Fiat lux, or, A guide in differences of religion,…Animadversions on a treatise intituled Fiat lux, or, A guide in differences of religion,…

I confess, in this passage, I am compelled to suspect more of ignorance then ⟨p. 334⟩fraud; notwithstanding the flourishing made in the distribution of the old Testament, into the Law, Prophets, and H•giography. For first, as to the Translation of the Scripture by the Jews into the Syriac Tongue, to what purpose doth he suppose, should this be done? it could possibly be for no other than that, for which, his Masters keep the Bible in Latin. I suppose, he knows, that at least until the Captivity, when most of the Scripture was written, the Hebrew, and not the Syriac, was the vulgar language of that people. It's true indeed, that some of the noble and chief men that had the transaction of affairs with Neighbour-Nations, had learned the Syriac language toward the end of their Monarchy; but the body of the people were all ignorant of it, as is expressly declared, 2 Kings 18.26. To what end then should they translate the Scripture into that Language, which they knew not, out of that, which alone they were accustomed to from their infancy, wherein it was written? Had they done so, indeed it would have been a good argument for the Romanists to have kept it in ⟨p. 335⟩Latin, which their people understand almost as well as the Jews did Syriac. I thought, it would never have been questioned, but that the Judaical Church had enjoyed the Scripture of the Old Testament, in their own vulgar language, and that without the help of a Translation. But we must not be confident of any thing for the future. For the present this I know, that not only the whole Scripture that was given the Church for its use before the Captivity, was written in the Tongue that they all spake and understood, but that the Lord sufficiently manifests, that what he speaks unto any, he would have it delivered unto them in their own Language; and therefore appointing the Jews what they should say unto the Chaldean Idolaters, he expresseth his mind in the Chaldee Tongue, Jerem. 10.11. Where alone, in the Scripture, there is any use made of a Dialect, distinct from that in vulgar use; and that because the words were to be spoken unto them, to whom that Dialect was vulgar. And when after the Captivity, the people had learned the Chaldee Language, some parts of some