cence;" it is obvious, that either of them is more likely to be derived from the Hebrew name of God, than that name from them. For God is the object of awe, and the source of beneficence; and the Hebrew is by far the more ancient language. Setting out therefore with these negations, that these two words are neither compounds of more simple Hebrew roots, nor derived to the Hebrew from any foreign language; we may proceed another step, and venture to assert, that and are words of one and the same etymon, whatever that may be. For is manifestly the plural of and nothing else. That it is a plural, appears from the numberless instances in which, in regimine or taking suffixes, it undergoes those changes, which plurals masculine in those situations regularly undergo; dropping the termination, and, with the suffix of the first person singular, blending its plural Jod, by crasis, with the pronoun. The word therefore is plural, and it can be the plural of no other singular than [Eloah.]

We must here interrupt the progress of our philological reasoning to make a remark, not quite foreign even to that subject; that whatever may be the etymology of these two words, and whatever

the true interpretation of either, it cannot be without some reason; it cannot be, as some have pretended, from the mere caprice of language, that the plural word is much oftener used in the Scriptures, as a name of God, than the singular. That the plural word is used with the design of intimating a plurality in the Godhead, in some respect or other, it is strange that any one should doubt, who has observed, that it is used in places, in which if there be in truth no plurality in the Godhead, the inspired writers must have been determined, by the principles of their religion studiously to avoid the use of a plural; especially as they had singulars at command. The plural is used in that very precept, which prohibits the worship of any God but one. "I Jehovah am thy Gods, that brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.". "Be not unto thee other GoDs beside me :" and in every subsequent part of the Decalogue, where God is mentioned, the plural word is introduced. In the second commandment, "For I Jehovah am thy GODS :" in the third, "Take not the name of Jehovah thy Gods in vain :" in the fourth, "The Sabbath of Jehovah thy Gods:" in the fifth, "The

land which Jehovah thy Gods is giving thee." Who

ever will suppose, that this plural appellation of God, thus constantly used in the language of the law, which of all language should be the most precise and accurate, thus used in laws asserting and upholding the single Deity of the God of the Israelites, has no reference to the plurality of persons in the Godhead, should be able to demonstrate some other plurality in the Godhead, to which the expression may refer.

It is pretended by Abenezra, who has been followed in this notion by some Christian divines and critics of great note, that this plural word is used of God" for honour's sake," according to a usage of the language. But neither Abenezra, nor any of his followers, have ever shown, what they pretend, that it was really any usage of the Hebrew language, "to honour individuals," by speaking of them in the plural number: nor is it true, that it was customary for a great man, in the early ages, to speak of himself in the plural. The only proof which the learned Drusius, who adopts and defends this notion of Abenezra's, attempts to give of the existence of this pretended usage, is the frequent application of the noun Adonai [*], a plural noun as he imagines, to a single person. But the truth is, that

» [Adonai] אדני כיל

Adonai, so applied, is not plural. The final, in this, and in many other nouns, is not a plural termination; but as is now allowed by the best grammarians, formative either of a collective in the singular number, as in the noun 1, "a swarm of locusts;" or of a noun expressing something great, or excessive in its kind.," a great miser," from a great Lord." * If Adonai were really a plural, by idiom applied to a single person for honour's sake, the word without a suffix, and not otherwise, in regimine, might be expected to occur in that application, in the absolute form, Adonim And it has been imagined that the word so occurs in two passages, Is. xix. 4. and Mal. i. 6. But, in the first passage, the syntax, as we apprehend, has been greatly mistaken. The singular adjective is joined in the order of construction, not with the plural, but with the singular noun substantive", "the Egyptians I will give over into the harsh authority of masters"-in duram dominorum potestatem. In the second passage, the plural is indeed in apposition with the pronoun

*See Schroeder, Inst. ad Fund. Ling. Heb. p. 152.

singular ; but the person speaking is Jehovah : and this apposition of the plural noun with the singular pronoun is only an instance of a like insinuation of a plurality of persons in the Unity of the Divine essence, by the anomalous construction of this plural appellative, as we contend for in the similar construction, which so much more frequently occurs, of the plural Elohim. Other appellatives are occasionally constructed in the same manner, when applied to God.

But the same Abenezra, who, upon Gen. i. 1, takes up this false notion, that by the usage of the Hebrew language, a great person is spoken of in the plural number; upon another place, Ps. xi. 7, says, that the plural of this word Elohim, in the applica tion of it to God, involves a deep mystery. Not that he acknowledges the mystery of a plurality of persons in the Godhead. He was too much an ene my to Christianity to acknowledge, what was not unknown to his forefathers. He expounds the mys tery of the plural word, of what is certainly no mys. tery at all; of the plurality of powers or virtues emanating from God upon the substances of the external world. But this is nothing more than the plurality of the effects of God's creating power. It is