Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
Ver. 7. Go to, let us go down.] "Go to," say they: "Go to," saith He. "Let us build to heaven," say they: "Let us go down and see it," saith He. "Let us make us a name," say they: "Let us confound their language, that they may not so much as know their own names," saith He. "Lest we be scattered," say they: "Let us scatter them abroad the world," saith He. Thus God words it with them, and confutes their folly from point to point. Thus he sets himself in battle array against the proud, as St James has it, αντιτασσεται , Jam 4:7 and overthrows them in plain field. He dealt more severely with David for numbering the people than for the matter of Uriah. He turned Nebuchadnezzar grazing among beasts, for pruning and priding himself upon this Babel. "Is not this great Babel, that I have built?" Why, no; Nimrod built it, and Ninus, and Semiramis: Nebuchadnezzar only beautified it, or, at utmost, enlarged it. But pride detracts from God and man, and is therefore justly hated and scorned of both.
And there confound their language.] When men began once θεομαχειν, they were compelled by God λογομαχειν .
“Bring me, quoth one, a trowel quickly; quick
One brings him up a hammer; hew this brick,
Another bids, and then they cleave a tree;
Make fast this rope, and then they let it flee.
One calls for plank; another mortar lacks:
They bring the first a stone, the last an axe.” - Dubartus.
Neither is there any better understanding and agreement among the Babel builders at this day (Babylon enim altera, nempe propinquior atque recentior adhuc stat, cito itidem casura, si essetis viri, said Petrarch long since); witness their many sects and deadly dissensions among themselves, of which read the "Peace of Rome," "Rhemes against Rome," a and various other English treatises to the same purpose. Bellarmine teaches, that the bread in the sacrament is not turned into Christ's body productive, but adductive. And this, saith he, is the opinion of the Church of Rome. This Suarez denies, and saith, it is not the Church's opinion. b Thus these great master-builders are confounded in their language, and understand not their own mother. The greatest clerks among them cannot yet determine how the saints know our hearts and prayers - whether by hearing or seeing, or presence everywhere, or by God's relating or revealing men's prayers and needs unto them. All which ways some of them hold as possible or probable; and others deny and confute them as untrue. c Alsted calls Baronius's "Annals" the Tower of Babel. And another saith, Baronius doth not write annals, but maketh them. How he takes up St Paul for reproving Peter at Antioch, and contradicts the Holy Ghost, is well known; as also how he thunders against the king of Spain, his sovereign, concerning the kingdom of Sicily; for the which rudeness, when he was reprehended by another cardinal, he thus defended himself: An imperious zeal hath no power to spare, no, not God himself. Was not this an apology well befitting a Babel builder? Christchurch, in Oxford, like the tower of Babel, saith one, began with such stupendous magnificence, under the pride of Wolsey (another cardinal of the Church of Rome), who resolved to make it a work of wonder, that the Controller of men's actions determined to make it a work of confusion; and so, when the cardinal fell, the walls had fallen too, had not Henry VIII. looked graciously upon it, to set it up, to some purpose. d
a De Rom. utriusque Fort. Dial., 118.
b Cade Of the Church, 247.
c Morton's Appeal, lib. ii. cap. 12, sec. 5.
d Gainsf. Glor. of England.