t.... It began with
the world and the Church, and continued and increased in glory till the
captivity in Babylon.... As the man in Seneca, that through sickness lost
his memory and forgot his own name, so the Jews, for their sins, lost
their language and forgot their own tongue.... Before the confusion of
tongues all the world spoke their tongue and no other but since the
confusion of the Jews they speak the language of all the world and not
their own."

But just at the middle of the century (1657) came in England a champion
of the sacred theory more important than any of these--Brian Walton,
Bishop of Chester. His Polyglot Bible dominated English scriptural
criticism throughout the remainder of the century. He prefaces his
great work by proving at length the divine origin of Hebrew, and
the derivation from it of all other forms of speech. He declares it
"probable that the first parent of mankind was the inventor of letters."
His chapters on this subject are full of interesting details. He says
that the Welshman, Davis, had already tried to prove the Welsh the
primitive speech; Wormius, the Danish; Mitilerius, the German; but the
bishop stands firmly by the sacred theory, informing us that "even in
the New World are found traces of the Hebrew tongue, namely, in New
England and in New Belgium, where the word Aguarda signifies earth,
and the name Joseph is found among the Hurons." As we have seen, Bishop
Walton had been forced to give up the inspiration of the rabbinical
punctuation, but he seems to have fallen back with all the more tenacity
on what remained of the great sacred theory of language, and to have
become its leading champion among English-speaking peoples.

At that same period the same doctrine was put forth by a great authority
in Germany. In 1657 Andreas Sennert published his inaugural address
as Professor of Sacred Letters and Dean of the Theological Faculty at
Wittenberg. All his efforts were given to making Luther's old university
a fortress of the orthodox theory. His address, like many others in
various parts of Europe, shows that in his time an inaugural with any
save an orthodox statement of the theological platform would not be
tolerated. Few things in the past are to the sentimental mind more
pathetic, to the philosophical mind more natural, and to the progressive
mind more ludicrous, than addresses at high festivals of theological
schools. The audience has generally consisted mainly of estimable