language, which are similarly circumstanced as to article and conjunction.

I take no notice, at present, of your limitations to this rule, because, in what I am now going to add, I shall keep within the bounds of those limitations, and therefore they are of no consequence here, not affecting the arguments I am about to produce. Afterwards, in another letter, I shall consider the li mitations themselves, and inquire into your reasons for making them; how far you are authorised by the nature of language, or of things, to make them; and how far you yourself have adhered to them when made.

Now, Sir, that this rule, which your learned editor, Mr. Burgess, calls yours, because though it was ' acknowledged by others, it was never,' he says,

so prominently and effectually applied,' and, he might have added, never so inflexibly and heroically maintained, in defiance of all sense and reason, grammatical, natural, and revealed ;* that this rule, which your anonymous correspondent too has dignified with the title of a valuable discovery,' is no infallible guide to truth, you and your correspondent

* Beza is tolerably bold and sturdy, when he says: "Nobis “quidem non desunt plurima, apertissimaque deitatis Christi tes❝timonia, qui nisi verus esset Deus certe nobis adorandus non "esset. Cur igitur quæcunque se nobis offerunt ejusmodi ut sine "manifesta calumnia non possint alio torqueri, utrisque manibus, "imo manibus ac pedibus, imo vivi ac mortui, totis viribus non potius "retineamus quam vel tantillum hæreticis concedamus." But then, as Mr. Burgess observes, this is singly' said, upon one text (Tit. ii. 13) only. Your boldness is prominently applied to many texts collectively, by half dozens at a time.

might have discovered, if you had looked into so common a book as the "Port Royal Greek Gram"mar:" and by so doing, the discovery might have been made without putting yourself to the painful expence of quoting greek, of drawing manuscripts letter by letter (page 46), and of inventing a new theory of punctuation (p. 35-50), or your correspondent to that of wading through so much,' as he pathetically expresses it (p. 99), and of rummaging an immense mass of "all such reading as is never "read;" the accumulated filth of fourteen centuries, collected into so many enormous folios, that the bare list of them, which he has given us in his appendix, makes our very hearts ache to think of what he must have undergone. You might have made the discovery without travelling beyond the limits of your own native language,

The very first observation which the above-mentioned able grammarian makes in his remarks on the use of the article, is, that its office is the same in the

greek as in almost all the modern languages.'* The office of the article then being the same in english as in greek, your rule may be tried by the one language as well as the other. And, unless mystery and obscurity were a recommendation which decided your choice, you might have confined your examples within the pale of your own tongue, and, by so doing, not only have enabled every reader to judge

*Bishop Lowth also agrees with the Port Royal grammar, and expressly notices the near affinity between the greek article and the english definite article.' See the passage quoted from his grammar near the beginning of my second letter.

of

of a question to which, without a knowledge of greek, every reader is competent; but might, perhaps, likewise have seen your own way somewhat more clearly before you. The rule is just as good and valid, when applied to the english as to the greek, and might be made every way as plausible in the one language as the other.

،

Do but observé, Sir, how fair and goodly your theory may be made to look in english, which, without calling in any foreign aid, would have supplied you and your correspondent, as I will now shew you, each with examples to his own taste, which will set off your valuable discovery' to as great advantage as it appears when dressed in a grecian garb, except, perhaps, that the beholder, knowing a little more of the one than he may of the other, has not quite so much left for his imagination to work upon.

I

That in the english language, when the article is used before the first, and omitted before the second of two personal nouns, connected by the copulative, these nouns relate to one and the same person, you might shew from the scriptures. As for instance, from 1 Pet. ii. 25, "the shepherd and bishop of your "souls," it is manifest, that because the two nouns shepherd and bishop both refer to Jesus, therefore [I beg the fact may not be attributed to a wrong cause] the first has an article before it, and the second has none. Again, in the expression which we before quoted from Ephes. i. 3." The God and Fa"ther of our Lord," it is plain that both God and Father refer to the Almighty, and for that reason

the

the first alone has an article. So likewise, in Ephes. vi. 21, "Tychichus, a beloved brother, and faithful "minister," the two nouns being meant of Tychichus, the one accordingly has, and the other has not, an article.* And what puts this matter out of doubt, and confirms your rule beyond all question, is, that when the reference is to different persons, the article is always repeated before the second noun; as, for instance, in Ezek. xxii. 7. "They "vexed the fatherless and the widow :" and again, in Ephes. vi. 23. "Peace be to the brethren from

*You will not, I presume, object to this example, on account of its being the indefinite, instead of the definite article that is used but if you should, I can say as you do (p. 36.) of an unfortunate comma, that it has been inserted in the english version without any authority, for in the original it is the definite, which you know, Sir, is the only article in that language. By the bye, this is a curious assertion of yours about the poor comma. How you should come to know that it was inserted after the word God, in 2 Thess. i. 12, without authority, I am at a loss to discover. It is certainly found in the first edition (1611 folio,) of our present version; and therefore one would suppose, that the translator meant to insert it, unless you have found some original manuscript of our present version which proves the contrary. For you surely never can mean to say, that a translator has no authority to insert a comma, or any other point that he thinks proper, into his own version, in order to shew his readers more clearly what sense he gives to the original. The question is not whether he gives the true sense, but whether he has any authority to explain his own meaning, which is the only use of any points he may make use of.

+ Please to observe, that both these nouns are singular, as appears from both the hebrew and the greek, and also from Exod. xxii. 22, to which this place of Ezekiel refers: so that these nouns are strictly within your limitations.

"God

God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ." Nay, in one and the same verse, we find this distinction clearly marked, and the rule faithfully adhered to, as in 2 Pet. iii. 2. "The holy prophets, and the "apostles of the Lord and Saviour,"* where prophets and apostles are different persons, and therefore the article is repeated; but Lord and Saviour being the same person, there it is not repeated.

Thus you might amuse us by citing from the scriptures, in confirmation of your rule, these and many more passages which your industry might collect, in number at least equal to those you have produced from the greek testament; while your aidde-camp, who seems to pride himself more in the weight and density, than the simplicity and value, of his materials, might bring to your assistance a solid body of quotation, thick and threefold, from the dross of fathers, councils, and schoolmen.

He might begin with the Nicene creed, as our prayer-book calls it, which, though it be not the Nicene creed, but only spuriously imposed upon us as such, he, I presume, would not object to on that account, because he declares at the opening of his correspondence (p. 11), that he is not scrupulous 'to note whether an extract be from a genuine or spurious work; the precise date of a treatise, or its genuineness being in this argument of very in

* I omit a few words of no importance to our question between the two nouns prophets and apostles, as I observe you do the same thing occasionally in your greek examples; and therefore I imagine you will not object to the passage on that account; especially as it is brought, like your own, to confirm your rule. • considerable