Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

POST-REFORMATION CULMINATION.
outweigh the negative testimony of those who have not, and
he finally decides that the salt statue is still in being.
No doubt a work like this produced a considerable effect
in Protestant countries; indeed, this effect seems evident as
tar off as England, for, in 1720, we find in Dean Prideaux's
Old and New Testament connected a map on which the statue
of salt is carefully indicated. So, too, in Holland, in the
Sacred Geography '^^x\i\\^\\Q^ at Utrecht in 1758 by the theologian
Bachiene, we find him, while showing many signs of
rationalism,
existence of
evidently inclined to the old
the salt pillar; but just here
views as to the
comes a curious
evidence of the real direction of the current of thought
through the century, for, nine years later, in the German
translation of Bachiene's work we find copious notes by the
translator in a far more rationalistic spirit ; indeed, we see
the dawn of the inevitable day of compromise, for we now
have, instead of the old argument that the divine power by
one miraculous act changed Lot's wife into a salt pillar, the
^^ suggestion that she was caught in a shower of sulphur and
saltpetre, covered by it, and that the result was a lump,
which in a general way is called in our sacred books " a
pillar of
*
salt."
But, from the middle of the eighteenth century, the new
current sets through Christendom with ever-increasing
strength. Very interesting is it to compare the great scriptural
commentaries of the middle of this century with those
published a century earlier.
Of the earlier ones we may take Matthew Poole's Synopsis
as a type: as authorized by royal decree in 1667 it con-
tains very substantial arguments for the pious belief in the
statue. Of the later ones we may take the edition of the
noted commentary of the Jesuit Tirinus seventy years later:
while he feels bound to present the authorities, he evidently
endeavours to get rid of the subject as speedily as possible
245
* For Briemle, see his Anddchtige Pilgerfahrt, p. 129. For Masius, see his
De Uxore Lothi in Statuam Salis conversa, Hafnise, 1720, especially pp. 29-31.
For Dean Prideaux, see his Old and N'ew Testament connected in the History
of the Jews, 1720, map at page 7. For Bachiene, see his Historische und geographische
Beschreibung von Palcestina, Leipzig, 1766, vol. i, pp. 11 8-1 20, and
notes.