It was in the
midst of this series of triumphs that Father Louis Thomassin,
Priest of the Oratory, issued his _Universal Hebrew Glossary_. In
this, to use his own language, "the divinity, antiquity, and
perpetuity of the Hebrew tongue, with its letters, accents, and
other characters," are established forever and beyond all cavil,
by proofs drawn from all peoples, kindreds, and nations under the
sun. This superb, thousand-columned folio was issued from the
royal press, and is one of the most imposing monuments of human
piety and folly--taking rank with the treatises of Fromundus
against Galileo, of Quaresmius on Lot's Wife, and of Gladstone on
Genesis and Geology.
The great theologic-philologic chorus was steadily
maintained, and, as in a responsive chant, its doctrines were
echoed from land to land. From America there came the earnest
words of John Eliot, praising Hebrew as the most fit to be made a
universal language, and declaring it the tongue "which it pleased
our Lord Jesus to make use of when he spake from heaven unto
Paul.
Pages:
1034
1035
1036
1037
1038
1039
1040
1041
1042
1043
1044
1045
1046
1047
1048
1049
1050
1051
1052
1053
1054
1055
1056
1057
1058