308 ESSAY TOWARD TFìE . [sF.CT. tV,; with the Philistines." Ezek. xviii. 20. " The soul that sinneth, it shall die." Ps. lxxxix. 48. " \Vhat man is he.that liveth, and shall not see death ? ShalI he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave ?" 1 Kings xix. 4. " Elijah requested for himself, that he might die," hebrew" that his soul might die. Answer. The word " soul" in English, " nephesh" in hebrew, " psyche's in greek, and " anima" in latin, &c. signifies not, only, the conscious and active principle,in man,, which thinks and reasons, loves and hates, hopes and fears, and which is the proper agent invirtue or vice,: but is used, also, to signify the principle 'of animal life and motion in a living creature. And though these two in themselves are very distinct things, yet upon this ac- count the word soul is attributed to brutes, as well as to men : for the Jews; as well as some heathens, in their mistaken philosophy, supposed the same soul of man, which gives natural life to the body, to be, also, that very intellectual principle, which thinks and reasons, fears and loves ; and, upon this account, theygave both these principles, how distinct soever in themselves, one com- mon name, and called them the soul. Now the soul, or the principle of animal life and mo- tion, being the chief or most valuable thing in an animal, it came to pass, that the whole animal was called a soul : therefore, even birds and fishes are called living souls; Gen. i 20. and any animals whatsoever, in scripture, are called souls, or living souls. Aid then, for the same reason, that is, because the soul of man is his chief part, the whole person of man is called his soul; Gen. ii.7. Man became a living soul," that is, a living person. So Exod. i. 5. " All the souls, that came out of the loins of Jacob, were seventy souls," that is, all the persons were seventy. And this is not, only, the Ianguage ofthe Jews, but even of other nations. In our country we use the word souls to signify persons : so we say a poor soul, when we see a person in misery : We use the word a meagre soul, for a thin man : We say, there .were twenty souls lost in the ship, that is, twenty persons, &c. Now the word soul, among the Jews, being so univer- sally used to signify the person of man, they used the same word to signify the person when he was dead, as
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