REMARKS ON 1 TIMOTHY iv. 1-3. HE Rev. Mr. * THE in his "General and connected View of "Prophecies," &c. p. 229 to 239, speaking of St. Paul's prophecy, in the first Epistle to Timothy c. iv. that in the latter times some should depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing Spirils and Doctrines of Devils,' &c. remarks, that this most accurate prophecy of the introduction of Celibacy, among the Clergy, and the injunction of it as a duty by the Monks, appears to me' (says he) to have been ⚫ been considerably obscured by the manner in which our translators have rendered part of the passage that ⚫ contains it. As the Text now stands' (continues he) the words in the close • of the first, and the beginning of the • second verse of the fourth chapter, run • thus 66 giving heed to seducing Spi"rits and DOCTRINES OF DEVILS; "speaking lies in hypocrisy." Now (says Mr. ***,)' if the word, here translated Devils, be, in the original, really a Substantive, in natural construction, that translated speaking lies should agree with it; and consequently those Teachers who should prohibit Marriage are denominated Devils ; but, at present, it seems far from clear whether these Devils are spoken of as the subject, or the teachers of the Doctrines.' To which I must reply, that the word, translated Devils, is really a Substantive, Axiuorior, the Genitive plural from the Substantive by which the Demons are most commonly mentioned in the New Testament, viz. το Δαιμονιον-8, in the Neuter Gender. There is also another Substantive, by which Demons are sometimes mentioned, viz. a Substantive in the Masculine Gender, ὁ Δαιμων-ονος, which occurs only five times in the N. Test. but the other at least sixty times, so that there is no want of examples to prove that the word is really a Substantive; and, consequently, Demons, or Devils, are here spoken of (not as the Subject, but) as the Teachers of the Doctrinesύςεροις καιροις αποςησονται τινες της πιςέως προσεχονίες πνεύμασι πλάνοις και διδασκαλίαις Δαιμονίων, ἐν ὑποκρίσει Ψευδολόγων, κεκαυτηριασμένων την ίδιαν συνειδησιν, κωλυονίων γαμείν, απέχεσθαι βρωμαίων, &c. In some Greek copies of this text a period has been erroneously inserted after the word Δαιμονιων, which is contrary to the proper grammatical construction struction of the whole context;* for not only the Participle Tavdol.oyer (speaking * Some late editions of the Latin Vulgate seem to have been formed from a Greek copy with this false pointing, or interpolated period, which does not appear in the ancient editions of the Vulgate. (See the Appendix.) But the peculiar stile of the Latin Vulgate itself, in this Text, proves the absurdity of inserting a period at thé end of the first verse; because the attempt to give a lite ral rendering of the Greek, so pointed, into Latin, has occasioned, in the 2d and 3d verses, an uncouth sentence, which is as notoriously ungrammatical and imperfect in the Latin, as it is in the Greek, when that period is inserted. For if the 1st verse had been a perfect sentence, iñ the original Greek, so as to require a period at the end of it, (for that is the true meaning of the word period), the persons therein mentioned (very properly in the nominative case) as the predicted agents, (viz." discedent 46 QUIDAM a fide, ATTENDENTES spiritibus erroris, et "doctrinis DÆMONIORUM, ") would also in the following sentence, where the same subject is continued, be mentioned, in like manner, as the agents, without any change of the nominative case, as LOQUENTES "mendacium, et cauteriatam HABENTES suam con"scientiam; PROHIBENTES nubere," &c. But, on the contrary, we find, that all the leading participles in the following sentence are in the genitive case plural (forming a very imperfect and ungrammatical sentence, if the period be admitted) which cannot otherwise be ac counted |