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it-a moral fact attested in our use of despot' as equivalent with 'tyrant,' as well as in the history of the word 'tyrant' itself—it can only be a blessedness for man to think of God as the absolute Lord, Ruler, and Disposer of his life; since with Him power is never disconnected from wisdom and from love: and, as we saw that the Greeks, not without a certain sense of this, were well pleased to style the gods SeoTóraι, however they might refuse this title to any other; so, within the limits of Revelation, we find deσTóτηs, no less than Kúpιos, applied to the true God. Thus in the Septuagint, at Josh. v. 14; Prov. xxix. 25; Jer. iv. 10, and elsewhere; while the occasions on which God is styled deσπóτηs in the N. T. are these: Luke ii. 29; Acts iv. 24; Rev. vi. 10; 2 Pet. ii. 1; Jude 5. Christ, but to Christ as God, that the title is ascribed. Erasmus, indeed, with that latent Arianism, of which, perhaps, he was scarcely conscious to himself, denies that, at Jude 5, deσπóTηV is to be referred to Christ; giving only kúptov to Him, and SeoTÓTηy to the Father. The fact that in the Greek text, as he read it, Ocóv followed and was joined to deσwóτŋv, no doubt really lay at the root of his reluctance to ascribe the title of SeσTÓTηs to Christ. It was with him not a δεσπότης philological, but a theological difficulty, however he may have sought to persuade himself otherwise.

In the last two it is to

There cannot be a doubt that, in agreement with all which has been said, SeoTÓTηs did express on the lips of the faithful who used it, even more than

Kúpios, their sense of God's absolute disposal of his creatures, of his autocratic power, so that "He doeth according to his will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth" (Dan. iv. 35). That to Greek ears it conveyed an impression of this kind is evident from a passage in Philo (Quis Rer. Div. Hær. 6), where he finds an evidence of Abraham's evλáßeia, of his tempering, on one great occasion, boldness with reverence and godly fear, in the fact that in his approaches to God he forsakes the more usual kúpie, and in its stead adopts the Séσπота, in which there was implied a more entire prostration of self, an ampler recognition of the omnipotence of God.

§ xxix. — ἀλαζών, ὑπερήφανος, ὑβριστής.

THESE words occur all three of them together at Rom. i. 30, although in an order exactly the reverse from that in which it will be here found most convenient to consider them. They offer an interesting subject for synonymous discrimination; the aλaçóv being, as we shall find, boastful in words, the ὑπερήφανος proud in thoughts, the ὑβριστής insolent and injurious in acts.

And first, as respects aλačov. This word occurs in the N. T. only in one other place (2 Tim. iii. 2) besides that already referred to; aλačoveía also twice, Jam. iv. 16; 1 John ii. 16. Derived from aλn, a wandering about,' it was applied first to vagabond mountebanks, conjurors, quacksalvers,

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and exorcists (Acts xix. 13; 1 Tim. v. 13; Lucian, Revivisc. 29: αλαζόνες καὶ γόητες), who were full of empty and boastful professions of cures and other feats which they could accomplish; being from them transferred to any braggart or boaster, vaunting himself to be in possession of skill, or knowledge, or courage, or virtue, or riches, or whatever else it might be, which had no existence in fact, Thus Plato defines ἀλαζονεία to be ἕξις προσποιητικὴ ἀγαθῶν μὴ ὑπαρχόντων: while Xenophon (Cyr, ii. 2, 12) describes the αλαζών thus: ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἀλαζὼν ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ ὄνομα κεῖσθαι ἐπὶ τοῖς προσποιουμένοις καὶ πλουσιωτέροις εἶναι ἤ εἰσι, καὶ ἀνδρειοτέροις, καὶ ποιήσειν, ἃ μὴ ἱκανοί εἰσι, ὑπισχνουμένοις· καὶ ταῦτα, φανεροῖς γιγνομένοις, ὅτι τοῦ λαβεῖν τι ἕνεκα καὶ κερδᾶναι ποιοῦσιν ; and Aristotle (Ethic. Nic. iv. 7. 2) : δοκεῖ δὴ ὁ μὲν ἀλαζὼν προσποιητικὸς τῶν ἐνδόξων εἶναι, καὶ μὴ ὑπαρχόντων, καὶ μειζόνων ἢ ὑπάρχει.

It is not an accident, but of the essence of the ἀλαζών, that in his boastings he overpasses the limits of the truth (Wisd. ii. 16), as appears plainly from Aristotle's description of him, who nowhere ascribes to him merely the making unseemly display of things which he actually possesses, but the vaunting himself in those which he does not possess; cf. Rhet. ii. 6: τὸ τὰ ἀλλότρια αὑτοῦ φάσκειν, ἀλαζονείας σημεῖον : and Xenophon, Mem, i. 7. Thus, too, Plato (Pol. viii. 560 c) joins ψευδείς καὶ ἀλαζόνες λόγοι: and we have a lively description of the aλačov in the Characters (23) of Theophrastus; and, still better, of the shifts and

evasions to which he has recourse, in the work, Ad Herenn. iv. 50, 51. While, therefore, braggart or boaster' fairly represents aλaçov, 'ostentation' does not well give back aλatoveía, seeing that a man can only be ostentatious in that which he really has to show; we have, in fact, no word which renders it at all so adequately as the German 'Prahlerei.' For the thing, Falstaff and Parolles are both excellent, though infinitely diverse, examples of the aλakov: while, on the contrary, Marlowe's Tamburlaine, despite of all the big vaunting words which he utters, is no such, inasmuch as there are fearful realities of power with which these his μεγάλης γλώσσης κόμποι are sustained and borne out. This dealing in braggadocio is a vice sometimes ascribed to whole nations; thus an ἔμφυτος ἀλαζονεία was charged on the Etolians of old (Polybius, iv. 3; cf. Livy, xxxiii. 11); and, in modern times, on the Gascons, who out of this have given us the word 'gasconade.' The Vulgate, which translates aλaçóves, 'elati,' and which the Rhemish in its 'haughty' follows, has not seized the middle point of the word as successfully as Beza, who has rendered it 'gloriosi.' '

A distinction has been sometimes drawn between the αλαζών and the πέρπερος [ἡ ἀγάπη οὐ περπε

1 We formerly used 'glorious' in this sense. Thus, in North's Plutarch, p. 183: "Some took this for a glorious brag; others thought he [Alcibiades] was like enough to have done it." And Milton (The Reason of Church Government, i. 5): "He [Anselm] little dreamt then that the weeding hook of Reformation would, after two ages, pluck up his glorious poppy [prelacy] from insulting over the good corn [presbytery]."

peveraι, 1 Cor. xiii. 4], that the first vaunts of things which he has not, the second of things which, however little this his boasting and bravery about them may become him, he actually has. The distinction, however, is not one that can be maintained (see Polybius, xxxii. 6. 5; xl. 6. 2); both are liars alike.

But this habitual boasting of one's own, will hardly fail to be accompanied with a contempt for that of others. If it did not find, it would rapidly generate, such a sentiment; and thus aλatovela is nearly allied to repofía: we find them not seldom used as almost convertible terms; thus see Philo, De Carit. 22-24. But from vπepovía to πeρηpavía the step is very near; and thus we need not wonder to meet væreрýpavos joined with åλalóóv: cf. Clemens Romanus, Ad Cor. 16. This word occurs three times, besides the two occasions noted already; at Luke i. 51; Jam. iv. 6; 1 Pet. v. 5; vπeρηpavía once, Mark vii. 22. A picturesque image serves for its basis; ύπερήφανος, derived from ὑπέρ and φαίνομαι, being one who shows himself above his fellows, exactly as the Latin 'superbus' is from 'super;' as our 'stilts' is connected with 'Stolz,' and with 'stout' in its earlier sense of proud,' or 'lifted up.' Deyling (Obss. Sac. vol. v. p. 219): 'Vox proprie notat hominem capite super alios eminentem, ita ut quemadmodum Saul, præ ceteris sit conspicuus, 1 Sam. ix. 2. Figurate est is qui ubique eminere, et aliis præferri cupit.' A man can be actually dλaçov only when he is in company with his fellow men; but the true seat