ned the true words of the
sacred writers. Although many of the Reformers, as well as learned Jews,
had long seen that these assertions could not be made good, there had been
as yet no formal controversy upon the subject. Louis Cappel (_q.v._) was
the first effectually to dispel the illusions which had long prevailed by a
work on the modern origin of the vowel points and accents. The elder
Buxtorf had counselled him not to publish his work, pointing out the injury
which it would do the Protestant cause, but Cappel sent his MS. to Thomas
Erpenius of Leiden, the most learned orientalist of his day, by whom it was
published in 1624, under the title _Arcanum Punctationis revelatum_, but
without the author's name. The elder Buxtorf, though he lived five years
after the publication of the work, made no public reply to it, and it was
not until 1648 that Buxtorf junior published his _Tractatus de punctorum
origine, antiquitate, et authoritate, oppositus Arcano punctationis
revelato Ludovici Cappelli_. He tried to prove by copious citations from
the rabbinical writers, and by arguments of various kinds, that the points,
if not so ancient as the time of Moses, were at least as old as that of
Ezra, and thus possessed the authority of divine inspiration. Unfortunately
he allowed himself to employ contemptuous epithets towards Cappel, such as
"innovator" and "visionary." Cappel speedily prepared a second edition of
his work, in which, besides replying to the arguments of his opponent, and
fortifying his position with new ones, he retorted his contumelious
epithets with interest. Owing to various causes, however, this second
edition did not see the light until 1685, when it was published at
Amsterdam in the edition of his collected works. Besides this controversy,
Buxtorf engaged in three others with the same antagonist, on the subject of
the integrity of the Massoretic text of the Old Testament, on the antiquity
of the present Hebrew characters, and on the Lord's Supper. In the two
former Buxtorf supported the untenable position that the text of the Old
Testament had been transmitted to us without any errors or alteration, and
that the present square or so-called Chaldee characters were coeval with
the original composition of the various books. These views were
triumphantly refuted by his great opponent in his _Critica Sacra_, and in
his _Diatriba veris et antiquis Ebraicorum literis_.

Besides the works already mentioned in the course