"Howsoever these things are in men's depraved judgments and affections, yet Truth which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature."-BACON. "The Jesuit reasons thus: if the scriptures should be read by the people in the vulgar tongue, then new versions should be made in every age, because languages are changed every age. But this would be impossible, because there would be a lack of persons fit to make the versions; and, if it were possible, it would be absurd that the versions should be so often changed. Therefore the scriptures ought not to be read in the vernacular tongue. "I answer, this argument is ridiculous. For, in the first place, it is false that languages change every age; since the primary tongues, the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, have not undergone such frequent alterations. Secondly, there is never in Christian churches a lack of some sufficient interpreters, able to translate the scriptures and render their genuine meaning in the vulgar tongue. Thirdly, no inconvenience will follow if interpretations or versions of scripture, when they have become obsolete and ceased to be easily intelligible, be afterwards changed and corrected."-WHITAKER, 1588. PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE AND EXEGESIS, IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. London: MACMILLAN AND CO. 1876. All rights reserved. |