that their highest office and their necessary and principal effect was that of being the vehicle of a comment. Such is the force of education, literary discipline, example, and habit in generating fixed opinions. But let one deemed competent to judge and to speak upon this subject be referred to: "The Masoretic punctuation," says Bishop Lowth, "by which the pronunciation of the language is given, the forms of the several parts of speech, the construction of the words, the distribution and limits of the sentences, and the connection of the several members, _are fixed_, is in effect _an interpretation_ of the Hebrew text made by the Jews _of late ages_, probably not earlier than the eighth century, and may be considered as their translation of the Old Testament. Where the words, _unpointed_, are capable of various meanings, accordingly as they are variously pronounced and constructed, the Jews, _by their pointing_, have determined them to one _meaning and construction_, and the sense which they thus give is _their sense_ of the passage, just as the rendering of a translator into another language is _his sense_; that is, the sense in which in his opinion the original words are to be taken; and it has no other authority than what arises from its being agreeable to the rules of just interpretation. But because in the languages of Europe the vowels are essential parts of written words, a notion was too hastily taken up by the learned at the revival of letters, when the original Scriptures began to be more carefully examined, that the vowel points were necessary appendages of the Hebrew letters, and therefore _coëval with them;_ at least that they became absolutely necessary when the Hebrew was become a dead language, and must have been added by Ezra, who collected and formed the canon of the Old Testament, in regard to all the books of it in his time extant. On this supposition the points have been considered as part of the Hebrew text, and as giving the meaning of it on no less than Divine authority. Accordingly, our public translations in the modern tongues for the use of the Church among Protestants, and so likewise the modern Latin translations, are for the most part close copies of the Hebrew pointed text, and are in reality only versions at second-hand, translations of the Jews' interpretation of the Old Testament." After conceding to this interpretation what he supposes it may justly claim, he adds that the modern translators "would have made a much better use of it, and a greater progress in the explication of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, had they consulted it without absolutely submitting to its authority; had they considered it as an assistant, not as an infallible guide." Finally he compares the effect of this course to that of the Act of the Council of Trent in pronouncing the Vulgate to be of equal authority with the original Scriptures. (_Dissertation preliminary to his Version of Isaiah._)