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 authorities in church and state.
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