philologist, and are not intended to be taken in construction with the Verb. But will not the same objection lie against the terms v xal

¿ žv xal ¿ ¿pxóμevos, considered as those of John, as would when considered as those of the Alpha and the Omega? No; for John does not apply them to a person, but to the name of a person, which is quite another thing; and his definition simply affirms three distinct propositions, as being included in the name Kúpios, when this Noun is employed to represent the Hebrew name JEHOVAH, any one of which, independent of either of the others, may be asserted as involved in the term, which he simply declares has this threefold meaning: THE BEING, that is, He who has being in himself, who is being in the abstract, and therefore the cause of being to every thing that has existence; also, THE HE WAS, that is, the being of whom alone it can be affirmed that he always was always had existence without a beginning; and THE COMING ONE, He who is without end of days. The third proposition however includes another idea:"the Coming One" has reference, in particular, to what the OMNIPOTENT has made known respecting himself, that he will come to judge the world. Instances of this kind occur frequently in the Apocalypse, that is, words put in the Nominative, where, from the intention of the Writer not

having been understood by critics, they have objected to their accuracy in a grammatical point of view, insisting that they should have been put in another Case. Thus in the 5th verse of the first chapter we read καὶ ἀπὸ ̓Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὁ μάρτυς ὁ πιστὸς, and from JESUS CHRIST the faithful witness: here the Nouns 'Inσou Xpioтou are, according to regular usage, put in the Genitive, being preceded by άrò, which never governs any other Case; but the words that follow are in the Nominative. The reason, though at first sight not so apparent, is at bottom the same as in the preceding example of this kind of construction, ὁ μάρτυς ὁ πιστὸς representing here the indeclinable Hebrew noun

, Amen, as may be seen in ch. iii. v. 14, where, having expressed the Hebrew word in Greek letters-"thus saith THE AMEN" (¿ åμs),— the Writer instantly gives a Greek translation of the Hebrew term, adding i μáprus TITOS, thereby intimating that, wherever he uses this Greek expression, he speaks of him who, in the Old Testament scriptures, is called "THE AMEN:" it is owing to a similar cause that the words which follow these in the text, namely ρшτότοκος . . . ........ • äрxwv, the First-born from the dead, and The Prince (or Ruler), are also found in the Nominative. The Apostle here applies other two indeclinable Hebrew Nouns to JESUS

CHRIST, VIZ.

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[bechor] and my [elioun], thus informing the reader that these epithets, applied to the Messiah in Psal. lxxxix. 27, belong to JESUS CHRIST-or, in other words, that he alone is the Messiah; and by the other words which he introduces," from the dead," explaining the sense in which he is called "the first-born," in the Psalm from which John takes the epithet. In the Common Version the supplement "my" alters the sense of the proposition, which is, “I "will make (or constitute) him FIRST-BORN, [I "will constitute him] ELIOUN (the Most High)," or, according to John's translation, "THE PRINCE (or RULER) over the kings of the earth." But these and similar definitions, translations, and explanations, introduced into his work by the Writer of the Apocalypse, shall not be insisted on farther at present, as they necessarily must come into discussion in another work (should the author be blessed with health sufficient to enable him to finish it), to which the present volume is intended as a prelude. Enough, however, has been said to prove that they involve no violation of Grammar. Had they been put into that form of construction for which critics have in vain been looking, the whole sentence in which any of them occur would have conveyed a different sense from that intended by the writer, and the church would have lost that important instruc

tion which these, and such like, definitions, and explanations, were intended to communicate.

It may be remarked respecting these definitions and explanations, that, generally, their existence being once known, they are easily discovered, being commonly put in the Nominative case, and so glaring that this very circumstance led to the idea that the book is written in barbarous Greek; but let the Greek reader, wherever he finds these "barbarisms," pass them and proceed till he comes to words in proper construction with those which preceded them. He will then find that he has got the writer's entire sense; the intervening terms being merely parenthetical and when these supposed intruders are not followed by words in construction with those that went before, they are to be considered as in some way explanatory of some of the preceding terms that were found in proper con

struction.

§ 2. Of the junction of Attributive Nouns with Symbolical terms,--and particularly with rò apvíov, THE LAMB.

THE second particular which has contributed, not a little, to perplex translators, and, consequently, to obscure their versions, is the frequent employment of Hieroglyphical or Symbolical

epithets in the Apocalypse, not as Attributive Nouns, but in some other way: as, for example, Tò åρvíov, THE LAMB. The first place in which this Noun occurs in the Apocalypse is in ch. v. 6., " and I saw in the midst of the throne and of the

four animals and in the midst of the Elders, ap"víov, A LAMB," &c. Here, conformably to the rules of the language, this Noun appears without the Article, being its first introduction. In the case of any particular lamb, the recurrence of the same lamb would require the article, and it would of necessity be subjected to the rules that apply generally to common Nouns; but when, on the recurrence of this very term, we find that it is not used in its proper but in some other sense, though we may expect to find it preceded by the Article, to intimate that the Lamb intended is the same that had been mentioned before, we must first enquire in what sense the term is employed before we can decide how far it is to be considered, in other respects, under the dominion of the rules that apply to Nouns used in their common and proper acceptation, or to Attributives personified. Now it so happens that throughout the Apocalypse the Noun apvíov (excepting in one instance ch. xiii. 11. presenting no difficulty) is never employed as a common Noun, or even as an Attributive, in the common acceptation of these terms. It is always em