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C. VITRINGA

SACRED OBSERVATIONS.

CHAPTER I.

A decorative woodcut drop cap letter 'V' featuring intricate floral scrollwork and a bird figure within the letter's frame.

Just as it is fitting that we follow with due reverence those things found to have been handed down to us by our ancestors, so also the servitude of those minds is deservedly blamed which seek arguments from those ancestors for matters in which they neither achieved, nor could have achieved, any greater certainty than our own. For although we may not possess such a great abundance or firmness of reasons that it would be necessary to withdraw from their opinion—which is venerable due to the antiquity of so many centuries—neither should their authority instill such great faith in our minds that we lose the fullest remaining freedom of thought. Indeed, if we more accurately weigh everything that various authors have written concerning the miraculous confusion of tongues original: "confusione linguarum miraculosâ"; referring to the biblical account of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, we do not wonder so much that they were led to this opinion by the words of Moses The author of the Pentateuch, including Genesis, as much as we wonder that hardly any interpreter has occurred to us so far who has dared—not indeed to remove the splendor of the miracle entirely—but to diminish it, whereas many more have dared to increase it. And certainly, we do not wish to be considered among those who would either boldly oppose the opinion believed thus far with such great consensus of minds, or the many-faceted...