But Aben Ezra had evidently no aspirations for martyrdom; he
fathered the idea upon a rabbi of a previous generation, and,
having veiled his statement in an enigma, added the caution, "Let
him who understands hold his tongue."[[313]]
For about four centuries the learned world followed the prudent
rabbi's advice, and then two noted scholars, one of them a
Protestant, the other a Catholic, revived his idea. The first of
these, Carlstadt, insisted that the authorship of the Pentateuch
was unknown and unknowable; the other, Andreas Maes, expressed his
opinion in terms which would not now offend the most orthodox, that
the Pentateuch had been edited by Ezra, and had received in the
process sundry divinely inspired words and phrases to clear the
meaning. Both these innovators were dealt with promptly: Carlstadt
was, for this and other troublesome ideas, suppressed with the
applause of the Protestant Church; and the book of Maes was placed
by the older Church on the _Index_.
But as we now look back over the Revival of Learning, the Age of
Discovery, and the Reformation, we can see clearly that powerful as
the older Church then was, and powerful as the Reformed Church was
to be, there was at work something far more mighty than either or
than both; and this was a great law of nature--the law of evolution
through differentiation.
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