"That is, as exact as a mathematical demonstration?"
"Quite so."
"Come now," said my curate, like a fellow that was sure of himself, "that's going too far."
"Not at all," said Father Duff; "I maintain that the evidence of history on the one hand, and the external evidence of monuments on the other, combined with the internal evidence of Scriptural idiomatisms of time and place, are equivalent to a mathematical demonstration."
"You'll admit, I suppose," said Father Letheby, "that languages change their structures and meanings very often?"
"Certainly."
"The English of Shakespeare is not ours."
"Quite so."
"Even words have come to have exactly antithetical meanings, even in a lapse of three hundred years."
"Very good."