In his _Discovery
of the Dangerous Rock of the Romish Church_, published in 1580, he
speaks of "the Hebrew tongue,... the first tongue of the world,
and for the excellency thereof called `the holy tongue.'"
Yet more emphatic, eight years later, was another eminent
divine, Dr. William Whitaker, Regius Professor of Divinity and
Master of St. John's College at Cambridge. In his _Disputation on
Holy Scripture_, first printed in 1588, he says: "The Hebrew is
the most ancient of all languages, and was that which alone
prevailed in the world before the Deluge and the erection of the
Tower of Babel. For it was this which Adam used and all men
before the Flood, as is manifest from the Scriptures, as the
fathers testify." He then proceeds to quote passages on this
subject from St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and others, and cites St.
Chrysostom in support of the statement that "God himself showed
the model and method of writing when he delivered the Law written
by his own finger to Moses."[[181]]
This sacred theory entered the seventeenth century in full
force, and for a time swept everything before it.
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