discourse, and to whom the Greek translation of the Old Testa ment (which Hebraizes to a very great degree) was evidently familiar, — that translation, which acted in subservience to the Divine design of making the Greek language the vehicle of the Divine Word. The Apostles and Evangelists, therefore, were right in introducing into the style of the New Testament what ever peculiarities of idiom existed in the translation of the Old Testament, or in the spoken Greek of the Hellenizing Jews : and the more familiar that the reader of the Greek New Testa ment is with the Septuagint, and the Hebrew Syntax, the greater proficiency will he attain to in his sacred studies. The Paraclete conferred the most copious facility of speaking lan guages on the holy men who wrote the Scriptures of the New Testament : but it was necessary that they should descend to the level of their immediate auditors and earliest readers. If any of the Apostles were sent to-day to Barbarians or Greeks, he would (wisely, as I think) employ the most rugged tongues of the Barbarians, or the present vernacular Greek, however corrupt it be. The style of the New Testament has, in different passages, phrases which agree with the most approved Greek writers, even where you would least expect it. But the whole and perpetual spirit of the language employed by the writers of the New Testament is distinctivelv Hebraizing, and differs in
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this respect decidedly from the style of other Greek authors, though here and there resemblances are to be found : nor is this to be wondered at, since the volume of the New Testament is so small when compared with the vast mass of profane Greek writings ; besides that even these authors have sometimes let fall expressions which might not altogether please them, and which are eagerly caught at by philologists of much reading, and compared with the style of the Greek New Testament. See also my notes on John vi. 37, and xii. 6 ; and Rev. xi. 5.
Such being the case, I have not had far to go to explain the language of the Greek New Testament, for I have generally found an explanation close at hand. Thus, for example, in any passage of the Epistle to the Romans, I have compared it first with the immediate context, then with the remainder of the Epistle, then with the other Epistles of St Paul, then with the Greek Fathers, who, being themselves Greeks, studied both the