A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

I thought you would as little have meddled with this matter again, as you have done with other things of the like disadvantage unto you. For (1.) I told you sufficiently before what a vanity it was to enquire after a Translation of the Old Testament out of the Hebrew before the Babylonish Captivity, there being no other language but that ⟨p. 542⟩understood amongst the Generality of the Jewish People. And I then manifested unto you, and shall do so further immediately, that the Translation of the Scripture into Syriac which you enquire after, could have had no other design amongst the Jews in those days, then your keeping of it in Latin hath; namely that the People might not understand it. For if you shall persist to think that the Jews before the Babylonish Captivity at least, had any other vulgar language but the Hebrew, you will make all men of understanding smile at you at an extraordinary rate. Some while after the return of the people from their Captivity, they began to lose the purity of their own tongue, and most of them understood the Syrochaldaean, wherein about that time some small parts of the Scripture also were written, In no long process of time a great portion of them living scattered in the Provinces of the Macedonian Empire, and therefore called Hellenists, used and spake the Greek tongue, their own ceasing to be vulgar unto them. All these both in private, and in their public Synagogue Worship made use of a Translation of the Scripture into Greek, which was now become their vulgar tongue, and that made either by the LXXII. Elders sent from Jerusalem to Ptolemy Philadelphus, or which is more probable by the Jews of Alexandria, unto which City multitudes of them repaired, the Nation being made free of it by its founder; or it may be some while after by the Priest Onias, who lead a great Colony of them into Egypt, and there built them a Temple for their Worship. So did these Hebrews make use of a Translation, when their own tongue ceased to be vulgar unto them. The monster of serving God by rational men with a ⟨p. 543⟩tongue whereof they understand never a word, was not yet hatched.

I thought you would as little have medled with this matter again, as you have done with other things of the like disadvantage unto you. For (1.) I told you sufficiently before what a vanity it was to enquire after a Translation of the Old Testament out of the Hebrew before the Babylonish Captivity, there being no other language but that