Withywindle has a post quoting Montaigne on the value of Latin as a stable language (opposed to French). This leads him to speculate that stability may be one of the important features of language--presumably meanings need to stay approximately fixed to make communication possible, and this relative fixity will ensure that works of literature, etc, will remain comprehensible.
Except that, near as I have ever been able to tell, Latin is in flux over the 16th and 17th centuries, on account of the influence of humanism. Or, at least, the Latin of Grotius and Vitoria and Suarez looks nothing like the Latin of, say, Aquinas, and I've read some history that implies this is not a localized change. Perhaps these are intended to only be changes in preferred style, so that scholasticism remains comprehensible to humanism, but denigrated on aesthetic grounds.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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