is not grouped with fleshly lusts, in the catalogue of sins at Mark vii. 21, 22, is best described as 'petulance,' or wanton insolence; being somewhat stronger than the Latin 'protervitas,' though of the same nature, more nearly petulantia.' The doeλyns, as Passow observes, is very closely allied to the ὑβριστικός and ἀκόλαστος, being one who acknowledges no restraints, who dares whatsoever his caprice and wanton insolence suggest.' None, of course, would deny that doéλyeta may display itself in acts of what we call lasciviousness;' for there are no worse displays of "ßpis than in these; but still it is their petulance, their insolence, which causes them to deserve this name; and of the two renderings of the word which we have made, 'wantonness' seems to me the preferable, standing as it does, by the double meaning which it has, in a remarkable ethical connexion with the word which we now are considering.

In a multitude of passages the notion of lasciviousness is altogether absent from the word. Thus Demosthenes characterizes the blow which Meidias had given him, as in keeping with the known doéλyeia of the man (Con. Meid. 514). Elsewhere he joins δεσποτικῶς and ἀσελγώς (Or. xvii. 21), ἀσελγῶς and προπετώς (Or. lix. 46). As ἀσέλγεια Plutarch characterizes a like outrage on the part of Alcibiades, committed against an honorable

1 Thus Witsius (Melet. Leid. p. 465) observes: 'doéλyelav dici posse omnem tam ingenii, quam morum proterviam, petulantíam, lasciviam, quæ ab Eschine opponitur Tŷ μetpiótηti καὶ σωφροσύνη.

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citizen of Athens (Alcib. 8); indeed, the whole picture which he draws of Alcibiades is the fulllength portrait of an doeλyns. Josephus ascribes ἀσελγής. doéλyeia and pavía to Jezebel, daring, as she did, to build a temple of Baal in the Holy City itself (Antt. viii. 13. 1); and the same to a Roman soldier, who, being on guard at the Temple during the Passover, provoked by an act of grossest indecency a tumult, in which great multitudes of lives were lost (Ib. xx. 5. 3). And for other passages, helpful to a fixing of the true meaning of ảσéλyela, see 3 Macc. ii. 26; Polybius, viii. 14. 1; Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 1. 26; and the quotations given in Wetstein's New Testament, vol. i. p. 588. It, then, and dowría are clearly distinguishable; the fundamental notion of dowría being wastefulness and riotous excess; of doényeia, lawless insolence and wanton caprice.

§ xvii.—θιγγάνω, ἅπτομαι, ψηλαφάω.

WE are sometimes enabled, by the help of an accurate synonymous distinction, at once to reject as untenable some interpretation of a passage of Scripture, which might, but for this, have maintained itself as at least a possible explanation of it. Thus is it with Heb. xii. 18: "For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched" (ψηλαφωμένῳ ὄρει). Many interpreters have seen allusion in these words to Ps. civ. 32: "He toucheth the hills, and they smoke;" and to the

fact that, at the giving of the Law, God did descend upon mount Sinai, which "was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it” (Exod. xix. 18). But, not to say that in such case we should expect a perfect, as in the following Keкavμév, still more decisively against this is the fact that napáw is never used in the sense of so handling an object as to exercise a moulding, modifying influence upon it, but at most to indicate a feeling of its surface (Luke xxiv. 39; 1 John i. 1); often such a feeling as is made with the intention of learning its composition (Gen. xxvii. 12, 21, 22); while not seldom the word signifies no more than a feeling for or after an object, without any actual coming in contact with it at all. It is used continually to express a groping in the dark (Job v. 14); or of the blind (Isa. lix. 10; Gen. xxvii. 12; Deut. xxviii. 29; Judg. xvi. 26); and tropically, Acts xvii. 27; with which we may compare Plato Phad. 996): ψηλαφώντες ὥσπερ ἐν OKÓTEL and Philo, Quis Rer. Div. Hær. 51. The ψηλαφώμενον ὄρος, in that great passage of the Hebrews, is beyond a doubt the 'mons palpabilis ;' and the Vulgate, which has 'tractabilis,' means nothing else: "Ye are not come," the Apostle would say, "to any material mountain, like Sinai, capable, as such, of being touched and handled; not, in this sense, to the mountain that may be felt, but to the heavenly Jerusalem." It was, he would teach them, a νοητὸν ὄρος, and not an αἰσθητόν, to which they were come.

The so handling of any object as to exert a

modifying influence upon it, the French 'manier,' as distinguished from toucher,' the German betasten,' as distinguished from 'berühren,' would be either ἅπτεσθαι' οι θιγγάνειν. Of these the first is stronger than the second; äπтeσdai (= ‘contrectare'), than Oryɣável (Ps. civ. 15; 1 John v. 18), as appears plainly in a passage of Xenophon (Cyr. i. 3. 5), where the child Cyrus, rebuking his grandfather's delicacies, says: OT σe opw, ὅταν μὲν τοῦ ἄρτου ἅψῃ, εἰς οὐδὲν τὴν χεῖρα ἀποψώμενον, ὅταν δὲ τούτων τινὸς θίγῃς, εὐθὺς ἀποκαθαίρῃ τὴν χεῖρα εἰς τὰ χειρόμακτρα, ὡς πάνυ axlóuevos. Our Version, then, has just reversed the true order of the words, when, at Col. ii. 21, it translates μὴ ἅψῃ, μηδὲ γεύσῃ, μηδὲ θίγῃς, “Touch not, taste not, handle not." The first and last prohibitions ought just to have changed their places, and the passage should stand, "Handle not, taste not, touch not." How much more strongly will then come out the ever ascending scale of superstitious prohibition among the false teachers at Colosse. 'Handle not' is not sufficient; they forbid to taste,' and, lastly, even to touch,' those things from which, according to their notions, uncleanness might be derived. Beza has noted this well: Verbum θίγειν a verbo ἅπτεσθαι sic est distinguendum, ut decrescente semper oratione intelligatur crescere superstitio.'

1 In the passage alluded to already, Ps. civ. 32, the words of the Septuagint are, ὁ ἁπτόμενος τῶν ὀρέων, καὶ καπνί ζονται.

§ xviii.—παλιγγενεσία, ανακαίνωσις.

'Avayévvnois, a word frequent enough in the Greek Fathers (see Suicer, Thes. s. v.), no where occurs in the N. T.; although the verb avayevváw twice (1 Pet. i. 13, 23). Did we meet ȧvayévvnois there, it would furnish a still closer synonym to παλιγγενεσία than the ἀνακαίνωσις, which I propose to bring into comparison with it; yet that also is sufficiently close to justify the attempt at once to compare and distinguish them. It will be no small gain to the practical theologian, to the minister of God's word, to be clear in his own mind in respect of the relation between the two.

Παλιγγενεσία naturally demands first to be considered. This is one of the many words which the Gospel found, and, so to speak, glorified; enlarged the borders of its meaning; lifted it up into a higher sphere; made it the expression of far deeper thoughts, of far greater truths, than any of which it had been the vehicle before. It was, indeed, already in use; but as the Christian new-birth was not till after Christ's birth; as men were not new-born, till Christ was born (John i. 12); as their regeneration did not go before, but only followed his generation; so the word could not be used in this its highest, most mysterious sense, till that great mystery of the birth of the Son of God into our world had actually found place. And yet it is exceedingly interesting to trace these its subordinate, and, as they proved, preparatory uses. Thus,