Christianity in the times of the Apostles, there might be some plausibility in the conjecture. But there is no trace of such a designation; and indeed it would have been exceedingly improper as applied to a doctrine, which was preached publicly every where, and of whose ministers, both Jews and Pagans complained that they turned the world upside down. There are few words in the New Testament more common than idios, but there is not a single instance wherein it is accompanied with the article, that can be rendered otherwise than his own, her own, or their own. 23. So much for the distinction uniformly observed in Scripture between the words daßo2os and Saquoniov; to which I shall only add, that in the ancient Syriac version, these names are always duly distinguished. The words employed in translating one of them are never used in rendering the other; and in all the Latin translations I have seen, ancient and modern, Popish and Protestant, this distinction is carefully observed. It is observed also in Diodati's Italian version, and most of the late French versions. But in Luther's German translation, the Geneva French, and the common English, the words are confounded in the manner above observed. Some of the later English translations have corrected this error, and some have implicitly followed the com mon version. PART II. Αδης AND Γεεννα. THE next example I shall produce of words in which, though commonly translated by the same English term, there is a real difference of signification, shall be ads and yɛɛvva, in the common version rendered hell. That yɛɛvva is employed in the New Testament to denote the place of future punishment prepared for the devil and his angels, is indisputable. In the Old Testament we do not find this place in the same manner mentioned. Accordingly the word yɛɛvva does not occur in the Septuagint. It is not a Greck word, and consequently not to be found in the Grecian classics. It is originally a compound of the two Hebrew words ge hinnom, the valley of Hinnom, a place near Jerusalem, of which we hear first in the Book of Joshua 58. It was there that the cruel sacrifices of children were made by fire to Moloch, the Ammonitish idol. The place was also called Tophet ", and that, as is supposed, from the noise of drums, (Toph signifying a drum,) a noise raised on purpose to drown the cries of the helpless infants. As this place was, in process of time, considered as an em blem of hell, or the place of torment reserved for 40 38 Jos. xv. 8. It is rendered by the 70 Jos. xviii. 16. гai-Evrope, and in some editions, Tavva, hence the name in the N. T. 39 2 Chron. xxxiii. 6. 40 2 Kings, xxiii. 10. the punishment of the wicked in a future state, the name Tophet came gradually to be used in this sense, and at length to be confined to it. This is the sense, if I mistake not, in which gehenna, a synonymous term, is always to be understood in the New Testament, where it occurs just twelve times. In ten of these there can be no doubt: in the other two the expression is figurative; but it scarcely will admit a question, that the figure is taken from that state of misery which awaits the impenitent. Thus the Pharisees are said to make the proselyte, whom they compass sea and land to gain, twofold more a child of hell, vos yɛɛvvns, than themselves"; an expression both similar in form, and equivalent in signification, to vios diaßo2ov, son of the devil, and vios ang anwλelas, son of perdition. In the other passage an unruly tongue is said to be set on fire of hell, φλογιζομενη υπο της γεέννης. These two cannot be considered as exceptions, it being the manifest intention of the writers in both to draw an illustration of the subject from that state of perfect wretchedness. § 2. As to the word ådns, which occurs in eleven places of the New Testament, and is rendered hell in all, except one, where it is translated grave, it is quite common in classical authors, and frequently used by the Seventy, in the translation of the Old Testament. In my judgment, it ought never in 41 Matt. xxiii. 15, 42 James, iii. 6. Scripture to be rendered hell, at least in the sense and stones of the pit, ny tsal moth, the shades of But though our word hell, in its original signification, was more adapted to express the sense of ådns 43 See Junius' Gothic Glossary, subjoined to the Codex Argenteus, on the word hulyan. than of yɛɛvva, it is not so now. When we speak as Christians, we always express by it, the place of the punishment of the wicked after the general judgment, as opposed to heaven, the place of the reward of the righteous. It is true that, in translating heathen poets, we retain the old sense of the word hell, which answers to the Latin orcus, or rather infernus, as when we speak of the descent of Æneas, or of Orpheus, into hell. Now the word infernus, in Latin, comprehends the receptacle of all the dead, and contains both elysium the place of the blessed, and tartarus the abode of the miserable. The term inferi, comprehends all the inhabitants good and bad, happy and wretched. The Latin words infernus and inferi bear evident traces of the notion that the repository of the souls of the departed is under ground. This appears also to have been the opinion of both Greeks and Hebrews, and indeed of all antiquity. How far the ancient practice of burying the body may have contributed to produce this idea concerning the mansion of the ghosts of the deceased, I shall not take it upon me to say; but it is very plain, that neither in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, nor in the New, does the word 'adns convey the meaning which the present English word hell, in the Christian usage, always conveys to our minds. § 3. IT were endless to illustrate this remark by an enumeration and examination of all the passages in both Testaments wherein the word is found. The |