A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

I had much ado at first to understand what it is that you would have in this discourse; and no wonder, for I am sure you do not understand your self. And I am persuaded that if you knew how many prodigies you have poured out in these few lines, you would be amazed at the product of your own imagination. For (1.) You yet again suppose Syriac to have been the vulgar language of the Jews in the days of Hezekiah, a thing that never fell upon the fancy of any man before you, being contrary to express Scripture in the Testimony before recited, and all the monuments of those days, wherein the Sermons of the Prophets unto the people are recorded in the purest Hebrew; neither had ⟨p. 548⟩the people as yet been carried captive out of their own land, or been mixed with strangers, so as to have lost their language as you imagine, unless you think that indeed the Hebrew was never their vulgar tongue. 2. You suppose, the Syrian and Assyrian at that time to have been different Languages, whereof those who understood the one understood not the other: when they were but one and the same called [Greek or Hebrew] the tongue of Aram, neither was there ever any other difference between the Language of the Assyrians or Chaldeans, and that which was afterwards peculiarly called Syriac, but in some few words and various terminations, and how far this differed from the Jews Language you have an instance in the names given by Jacob and Laban to the same heap of witness, Gen. 31. 47. the one calling it [Greek or Hebrew] Galead, the other [Greek or Hebrew] jegar Sahadutha; neither was it at all understood by the common people of the Jews, Jer. 5. 15. (3.) You suppose that in the Language wherein Rabshakeh and the Princes conferred, their Syriac was an abbreviation of Assyriack, because in sound it was so near the other, that they would have him speak in. So that the Jews speaking Syriac, when the Princes desired Rabshakeh to speak Syriac, they meant another Language, as much differing from that, as French from English. But you are in the dark, and know not how you wander up and down to no purpose. There is nothing of the words that you pretend to be an abbreviation the one of the other in the Text, nor is there any such relation between them as you imagine, that they should be near in sound, though not in nature.