to whom, when doubting, and making but slow progress, the Divine assistance is promised; although the whole tenor of that passage demonstrates that dolévɛav means misery and calamity. It often happens that those who are ignorant of the Hebrew, and even of the Greek, and who implicitly adopt the Vulgate version, make some very distorted interpretations. Thus in Gal. iii. 1, Christ is said to be "evidently set forth," as if painted before the eyes of the Galatians. This in Greek is correctly written κατ' όφθαλμους προεγράφη. But because the Vulgate has rendered it Christus est proscriptus ante oculos,' the Latin fathers taught that Christ was proscribed, in the same sense as the Romans sometimes were; that is, that he was exiled by the Jews. Could any explanation be more childish?

§ IV. The arguments of those who advocate the purity of the New Testament Greek, considered.

While there are so many proofs that the style of the New Testament is not pure, but abounding in Hebraisms, it is surprising that any should tenaciously defend a contrary opinion. The arguments of such shall be briefly stated.

; I. Many things called Hebraisms, are not such, but pure Greek. To understand this objection correctly, it must be remembered, that the question is not whether pure Greek is mistaken for impure; but whether things have not been, and even now are, by some denominated Hebraisms, which are nevertheless pure Greek. This is cheerfully conceded.

What, for instance, is more common than the phrase ἐργάζεσθαι καλὸν or κακόν, which corresponds precisely to the

פעל טוב Hebrew words or עָשָׂה רָע עָשָׂה טוֹב or פעַל אֶוֶן

Yet Xenophon also writes ἐργάζεσθαι καλά Mem. Soc. II. 1. 27. The phrase, to fight a fight, and

the use of dúvaus, with reference to an army, are well known; but they are pure Greek, and must not be considered as Hebraisms. Many fall into this error, because they do not reflect that many phrases are common to all languages. It is not the least strange that we should find expresions in the New Testament, which are common to the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Latin. Hence Glassius, in the grammatical part of his Philologia Sacra, has often remarked concerning such things as are common to Greek, Latin, and foreign writers.

Although such things may be dismissed from the number of Hebraisms, yet it must be remembered, that though found in the Greek, they are no less Hebrew, or rather translated from the Hebrew; for to the writers of the New Testament books, the Hebrew language was vernacular. All their purity, therefore, is accidental; and every phrase common to all languages which they have used, they used because they learned it from their vernacular tongue. Thus also when we were tyros at the school and wrote Latin, we formed much of it from our vernacular tongue, which is likewise the case with many approved writers.

This has been correctly observed concerning the writers of the New Testament, by Gataker contra Pfochen, p. 61, and by other learned philologists. (Comp. Werenfel's Opuscul. Dissert. xiv. de Stilo Script. N. T. p. 360.)

II. They say further, that the words and phrases which occur in the New Testament, are found also among the Greek writers.

No one will deny that δικαιοσύνη, κοινόν, et cet., are found in the Greek writers. But this is not the question. The inquiry is, whether they are used by the Greek writers in the same sense as in the New Testament.

This distinction was made in Sect. II. And it appears that all the labours of Pfochen and Blackwall, who contended that every word occurring in the New Testament

is found also in other writers, is utterly lost; and they themselves have admitted, that a few words occur in the New Testament which are not found in any other author.

III. They defend the purity of the New Testament language by saying, that the words and phrases are read in the same sense in the Grecian authors.

But such have made an improper selection of writers, from which to defend the purity of the New Testament. For in the first place the poets should not have been mentioned, in whom many things occur which are similar to the Hebrew idiom. Thus gngá dry, is used by the poets like the Hebrew

to signify a continent. The Hebrew word viscera, is often applied to the mind, to the sensations and propensities of the soul, and indeed to every thing internal. The same term is often used by the Greek poets, as Eschylus, S. c. Th. 343, a basehearted, corrupt soldier, a deserter of his arms, is called κάκοσπλαγχνος.

In Plutarch de A. P. p. 58, a poet calls a brave-hearted man dgarúrλayxvos. Sophocles, Antiq. 517, calls two broδρασύσπλαγχνος. thers ὁμοσπλαγχνους. And thus also the Hebrews use it. (Comp. Mori libellus Animadv. in Longinum, p. 32.) It appears from this, that there are some principles which may guide us in this case. The following are proposed.

a. The poets, indulging their genius and their poetic licence, say many things in an unusual manner. They therefore do not correctly indicate the usage of common life. But in the New Testament, the chief thing, whether in narrating, or in teaching, or in the discourses of common life, is simplicity. Such a style, on such subjects, therefore, can never be referred to the licence and the ornaments of poetic diction, so as to demonstrate its purity; nor can its rules of writing be derived from those who boldly despise such rules.

b. The poets were permitted to adopt foreign words and

phrases. This is done by Horace in transcribing the Greek words of Pindar, by Lucan, by Seneca the tragedian, and some others. But no one dared to imitate such things in prose, or to defend a barbarism from their authority. The permission was doubtless given to the poets only to vary and adorn their writings, and also to show their learning. This is continually remarked by Heyne on Virgil. But in the simple language of the New Testament authors, is there this variety? this ornament? and this display of learning?

c. The poets drew many things from the primitive style of the East. The purity of the New Testament style cannot be defended from Homer, Æschylus, or Pindar, who adopted the Oriental idiom, and imitated the Hebrew. But as this rests on fact, the argument must be historical. Homer undoubtedly lived in Asia Minor, which bordered on the Syrian, Chaldee, and Persian provinces; and is it surprising that a poet of Asia Minor should learn the language and customs of the Orientals? It is in this manner that all which is said in the sacred books concerning the presence of the Deity in the temples, his regard or aversion to men, and his sending upon men diseases, darts, and arrows, is also found in Homer. Proximity of country produced a similarity in language, and an analogy in thoughts and expressions. Others, afterwards, copied Homer, and imitated his sublimity. The agreement of Homer, therefore, with the language of the East was the base of that similarity which is discovered in the lyric writers, as Pindar, and in the tragic, as Eschylus and Sophocles, though the former was a Theban, and the latter Athenians, and neither held intercourse with the Orientals. At this time, in the age of Miltiades and Themistocles, the Greeks were at war with Persia; and when the Greeks went from Europe into the East, it was natural for them to adopt many Orientalisms. And the Jews being then captive in Babylonia and Assyria, and widely

dispersed through those countries, had a continual intercourse with the Greeks. Hence it could not but happen that the Jews should transfer to the Greeks many of their words and forms of speech. These the poets would soon adopt, that thus they might display their learning and adorn their style.-As these things must be noted by the critic, the inclination to observe them will be increased, and an useful exercise afforded to any one who will study the commentaries on Job, the Prophets, and Proverbs, and particularly Lowth on Isaiah. where it is shown that many things are evidently used by Pindar in the same manner as by Isaiah.

Those, therefore, who defend the purity of the New Testament from the poets, ought to make some distinction in those passages of the poets which they quote. Thus a passage from the comic poetry, as Ernesti remarks, may be quoted, with the exception of the choruses. For the Greek comedies, consisting chiefly of dialogues, and the conversations of men concerning the affairs of common life, were in the colloquial style, although written in iambic verse; but in the choruses, the style was far more elevated. With these, therefore, if the choruses be exempted, we may compare the language of the New Testament. There are also a few things in the remaining fables of Aristophanes, which might have a similar bearing.

The defenders of the purity of the New Testament should also be careful to adduce the more ancient writers, as models of a pure style, such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, the Grecian orators, and all the writers who flourished from Socrates to Alexander the Great. This was the golden age of Grecian literature. Next to the writers of the golden age, were those who flourished from the conquest of the Macedonian empire by the Romans until Augustus. The most eminent of these is Polybius. The authority of those Greek writers, who lived in later times, particularly in the age of the