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Defense of an Essay, &c.

Aug.

"All this (the saying that the phrase "Supreme Ruler" always tallies with the word God) is nothing more than saying at great length what might have been said in four words, God just means God. Men may play fantastic tricks in the application of terms, but the meaning or significance of the terms as terms remains the same." What in- herent vitality words must have in them, one is ready to exclaim, to stand out so stiffly against men's perverse usus loquendi! Ernesti says,

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16. The meaning of words conventional. Words, considered simply as sound, have no meaning; for they are not natural and necessary signs of things, but conventional ones. Usage or custom has constituted a connection between words and ideas."

"The first of all the laws of interpretation is certainly this:—to en- deavor to investigate the sense of a writing or passage which is to be interpreted, according to the signification which the general usage of the language, or also the well known particular usage of the writer, connects with the words which he employs. The rule, in one word, amounts to this: we should seek in the first place the literal sense of every passage to be interpreted, as it must be afforded either by the general usage, or by one which is peculiar to the writer. This no one has doubted, and no one can doubt who is possessed of a sound understanding." Planck's Introd. to Sacred Philology and Interpreta- tion. Translated by Dr. Turner, p. 128.

These writers only declare in other words, what Horace said long before them, that words are the mere creatures of usage.

sense in which it is employed in English without an article-excepting when they do so in its true application, and convey by it its real meaning." I have several remarks to make on these two sentences. What is the meaning of the last? Heathen writers never use the word God without an article in the sense in which it is used without an article in English, excepting when they convey by it its real meaning: in other words, the word God in the English language, when used without an article, is used in the sense we call propriè, and heathen writers never use the word in this sense except when they convey by it its true meaning. This is a truisin Dr. L. might have spared us. Does he mean to lay down a general proposition that heathen writers universally, in their re- spective languages, never, &c? This would be saying something towards the support of his "grammatical test;" but unhappily for this supposition, many heathen languages, e. g. the Latin and Chinese, have no article; the Hebrew and Greek have. Will Dr. L. venture the assertion that wherever Elohim and Thcus are used without the article, these words always designate the Being whom we in English designate by the word God, when it is used without the article? My words were," We only maintain that it (shin) means god in the sense of heathen nations." Dr. L. changes this word "god" into "God," and asserts that the phrase "God in the sense of heathen nations is absurd. What is the difference between the phrase I used and that of Cudworth, “the pagan notion of the word god or gods?" Will Dr. L. as dogmatically assert the absurdity of the phrase used by that great scholar

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