Note 132 — AIDS TO REFLECTION IN THE FORMATION OF A MANLY CHARACTER, ON THE SEVERAL GROUNDS OF PRUDENCE, MORALITY, AND RELIGION. (continued 6)

Dr. Richard Field's "Of the Church," folio ed., Oxford, 1628, p. 58.—Ed.

[133] This word occurs but once in the New Testament, Romans v. 11, the marginal rendering being reconciliation. The personal noun, καταλλακτης, is still in use with the modern Greeks for a money-changer, or one who takes the debased currency, so general in countries under a despotic or other dishonest government, in exchange for sterling coin or bullion; the purchaser paying the catallage, that is, the difference. In the elder Greek writers, the verb means to exchange for an opposite, as, κατακκασσετο την εχθρην τοις στασιωταις.—He exchanged within himself enmity for friendship, (that is, he reconciled himself) with his party;—or, as we say, made it up with them, an idiom which (with whatever loss of dignity) gives the exact force of the word. He made up the difference. The Hebrew word of very frequent occurrence in the Pentateuch, which we render by the substantive, atonement, has its radical or visual image, in copher, pitch. Gen. vi. 14: Thou shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. Hence to unite, to fill up a breach, or leak, the word expressing both the act, namely, the bringing together what had been previously separated, and the means, or material, by which the re-union is effected, as in our English verbs, to caulk, to solder, to poy or pay (from poix, pitch), and the French suiver. Thence, metaphorically, expiation, the piacula having the same root, and being grounded on another property or use of gums and resins, the supposed cleansing powers of their fumigation. Numbers viii. 21: made atonement for the Levites to cleanse them.—Lastly (or if we are to believe the Hebrew Lexicons, properly and most frequently) it means ransom. But if by proper the Interpreters mean primary and radical, the assertion does not need a confutation: all radicals belonging to one or other of three classes. 1. Interjections, or sounds expressing sensations or passions. 2. Imitations of sounds, as splash, roar, whiz, &c. 3. and principally, visual images, objects of sight. But as to frequency, in all the numerous (fifty, I believe,) instances of the word in the Old Testament, I have not found one in which it can, or at least need, be rendered by ransom: though beyond all doubt ransom is used in the Epistle to Timothy, as an equivalent term.

[134] Review of the Memoirs of the Rev. J. Scott and Rev. J. Newton, 'Quarterly Review,' April, 1824.—Ed.

[135] Dedication to Taylor's 'Holy Dying,' p. 295, Bohn's Standard Library edition.—Ed.

[136] Appendix to Strype's 'Life of Cranmer.'—Ed.

[137] Slightly altered from the 'Worthy Communicant,' chap. iii. sect. v.; p. 523, vol. xv. of Heber's edition of Jeremy Taylor's works.—Ed.