gress of Letters. For Bentley, see his works, London, 1836, vol.
ii, p. 11, and citations by Welsford, Mithridates Minor, p. 2. As to
Bentley's position as a scholar, see the famous estimate in Macaulay's
Essays. For a short but very interesting account of him, see Mark
Pattison's article in vol. iii of the last edition of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica. The postion of Pattison as an agnostic dignitary in the
English Church eminently fitted him to understand Bentley's career, both
as regards the orthodox and the scholastic world. For perhaps the
most striking account of the manner in which Bentley lorded it in the
scholastic world of his time, see Monk's Life of Bentley, vol. ii, chap.
xvii, and especially his contemptuous reply to the judges, as given in
vol. ii, pp. 211, 212. For Cotton Mather, see his biography by Samuel
Mather, Boston, 1729, pp. 5, 6.

But even this dissent produced little immediate effect, and at the
beginning of the eighteenth century this sacred doctrine, based upon
explicit statements of Scripture, seemed forever settled. As we have
seen, strong fortresses had been built for it in every Christian land:
nothing seemed more unlikely than that the little groups of scholars
scattered through these various countries could ever prevail against
them. These strongholds were built so firmly, and had behind them so
vast an army of religionists of every creed, that to conquer them seemed
impossible. And yet at that very moment their doom was decreed. Within
a few years from this period of their greatest triumph, the garrisons of
all these sacred fortresses were in hopeless confusion, and the armies
behind them in full retreat; a little later, all the important orthodox
fortresses and forces were in the hands of the scientific philologists.

How this came about will be shown in the third part of this chapter.

III. BREAKING DOWN OF THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW.

We have now seen the steps by which the sacred theory of human language
had been developed: how it had been strengthened in every land until
it seemed to bid defiance forever to advancing thought; how it rested
firmly upon the letter of Scripture, upon the explicit declarations of
leading fathers of the Church, of the great doctors of the Middle Ages,
of the most eminent theological scholars down to the beginning of the
eighteenth century, and was guarded by the decrees of popes, kings,
bishops, Catholic and Protestant, and the whole hierarchy of