faith. But, in this memorable controversy, while the fainter hearts amongst us at first hesitated, faith plunged boldly in, and pushed as boldly on to the victorious end.
At its outset, and for long after, the controversy was a fierce one, for science, in her blind self-reliance, had asserted that English was not even an ancient language, much less, as the language of heaven, the original tongue. But Heaven, which surely knew best, had answered differently; and thenceforward the Church, by her whole education and ability, defended and proved Heaven's answer. Soon the literature of the sacred subject became, on the Church's side at least, a huge library of itself; while the Church, as she was justly entitled, held in contemptuous disregard those of her opponents who adventured into the controversy without first mastering its literature. And thus the Church had admittedly, at last, all the argument to herself; or, in other words, she emerged from the fight completely victorious. She was able to trace the original English of the Garden of Eden—perfect then, as now spoken, but lapsing, after the Fall and Babel, into Hebraic and other inferiorities, to be thenceforward redeemed, through our transitional and Hebrew-looking old English character, into the modern letters and language of perfect English, the language alike of earth and heaven.
Other popes or religious heads sought at this time to enter a periodic appearance, as well as the Mormon,
