God. Religious hatred seems never to have been carried further than it was between the Jews and the Samaritans. They admitted the divine authority of the Pentateuch, but rejected the other books of the Old Testament.

The Samaritan Pentateuch has been a subject of much discussion. Care must be taken to distinguish between the Pentateuch in the Hebrew language, but in the letters of the Samaritan alphabet, and the version of the Pentateuch, in the Samaritan language. One of the most important differences between the Samaritan and the Hebrew text, respects the duration of the period between the deluge and the birth of Abraham. The Samaritan text makes it longer by some centuries than the Hebrew text; and the Septuagint makes it longer by some centuries than the Samaritan. It is observable, that, in her authentic translation of the Latin Vulgate, the Roman Catholic Church follows the computation ex

pressed in the Hebrew text: and in her Martyrology, follows that of the Seventy. See an excellent Dissertation, by Father Tournemine, De Annis Patriarcharum, at the end of his edition of Menochius, 2 vol. fol. Paris. 1719. The arguments of Don Pezron (l'Antiquité des Temps retablie, and Defense de l'Antiquité des Temps), in favour of the Chronology of the Septuagint, are very strong, and are countenanced by every probable system of the chronology of oriental nations. A shorter period, than that of the Septuagint, is scarcely reconcileable with their chronology.

Such was the general state of the Jews, as far as it may be supposed to have influenced their language, at the time of the arrival of Christ. Whatever influence it had on their language when they expressed themselves in Hebrew, the same, and not in a less degree, it had on it, when they expressed themselves in Greek.

IV.

THE Biblical labours of Origen and St. Jerom are well known, and are mentioned in these observations. FROM THE DEATH OF ST. JEROM, TO THE REVIVAL OF LETTERS UNDER THE PONTIFICATE OF LEO THE Xth, a period of about one thousand years, now comes under consideration.

IV. 1. The comparatively low state of literature, and of the arts and sciences, during this middle age, must be acknowledged; but justice claims our gratitude to the venerable body of men, who strove against the barbarism of the times, and to whose exertions we principally owe the precious remains of sacred or prophane antiquity, which survived that calamitous æra. For whatever has been preserved to us of the writers of Greece or Rome; for all we know of the language of those invaluable writers; for all the monuments of our holy religion;

for the sacred writings which contain the word of God; and for the traditions of the wise and the good respecting it, we are almost wholly indebted, under providence, to the zeal and exertions of the priests and monks of the church of Rome, during the middle age. If, during this period, there were a decay of taste and learning, it is wholly to be ascribed to the general ruin and devastation, brought on the Christian world, by the inroads and conquests of the barbarians, and the other events, which were the causes or consequences, of the decline and fall of the Roman empire. Besides, while we admit and lament, we should not exaggerate, the literary degradation of the times we speak of. Biblical literature, the immediate subject of the present inquiry, was by no means entirely neglected. Dr. Hody, in his most learned Historia Scholastica Hebraici Textus Versionumque Græcæ et Latina Vulgatæ, places this circumstance beyond the reach of controversy. He proves,

that there never was a time, even in the darkest ages, when the study of the original language of the Holy Writings was wholly neglected. In England alone, the works of Venerable Bede, Holy Robert of Lincoln, and Roger Bacon, shew how greatly it was prized and pursued there.

IV. 2. Copies of works were not then multiplied, at the party's will, by the instantaneous operation of the press. They were transcribed by the labour of individuals, a task of infinite pains and perseverance, and to which, (for gain was out of the question), nothing but the conscientious and unwearied industry of a religious copyist was equal. To this Gerhardus Tychsen, professor of philosophy and oriental literature, formerly at Butzow, now at Rostock, (the two Universities of Butzow and Rostock being united), in his Tentamen de variis Codicum Hebræorum Veteris Testamenti MSS. Rostocki, 1772, bears ample testimony. He observes, that all manuscripts of the Maso