Now to apply these observations to the case in hand. Our translators having been educated in the Jewish sense of the Hebrew Scriptures, and having studied the original with the points under the received and general impression that they were of equal authority with the text, of course proceeded with their translations under the influence of whatever erroneous constructions and opinions the Massorites and their disciples entertained. Those errors, therefore, which were predominant in the Jewish mind when the points were added to the text, and when the causes of prejudice and hostility against the Christian doctrines were universally and most violently in operation, were perpetuated, both among Jews and Christians, by the use of those ingenious and plausible appendages; and from that day to this, translators and expositors have fallen back upon them, and upon the awful petrifactions of Talmudical and rabbinical jargon, as guides to the meaning of the words of Inspiration. The Jewish people, after their total defection to idolatry, their exile in Babylon, and the cessation of prophetic gifts, having renounced idols and incurred the hatred and contempt of idolaters, were, from their restless state of mind, their internal divisions, feuds, and rivalships, and the exposures and vicissitudes of their external condition peculiarly exposed to cardinal and sectarian errors. They had forsaken Jehovah, and no longer received any tokens of his presence and favor. Both priests and people, a faithful remnant always excepted, had rejected him as their mediatorial prophet, priest, and king, and renounced their allegiance to him as their lawgiver and providential ruler and protector; and holding no longer the belief of a Divine mediator or of any mediation, they relapsed into that notion of the Unity which they still adhere to, and looked only for a temporal political Messiah. The fitful efforts at reformation which, under the influence of Ezra, Nehemiah, and the latest prophets, appeared after the rebuilding of their temple, gave place to extremes of formalism, hypocrisy, and impiety. Their notions of the person, offices, prerogatives, incarnation and sacerdotal work of the Anointed One, were as unscriptural and baseless as those of more modern times.