S1iG1'ION 1V'. life of the soul continuing after the death of the body, that it often speaks of the death of the soul, if the words were trams lated exactly according to the original. Numb. xxxi. 19. " Whosoever hath killed any person," " Hebrew" any soul. i Sam. xxii. 12. I have occasioned the death of every soul of ihy father's house." Judges xvi. 30. " And Sampson said, let my soul die with the Philistines." Ezek. xviii. 20. " that sinneth, it shall die." Ps. lxxxix. 48. "What man is he that lived?, and shall not see death? Shall 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, as nephesh" in Hebrew, " psyche" 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 in virtue or vice, but it is used, also to sig- nify the principle of animal life and motion in a living creature. And though these two in themselves are very distinct things, yet upon this account 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, they gave both these principles, how distinct soever in themselves, one common name, and called them the soul. Now the soul, or the principle of animal life and motion, being the chief or most valuable thing in an animal, it came to pass that the whole animal was called a soil : therefore, even birds and fishes are called living soils ; Gen. i. 20, and any animals whatsoever in scripture are called souls, or living souls. And 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 language of the Jews, but even of ether nations. In our country we use the word souls to signify persons : so we say a poor soul, when we see a person in mi- sery: 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, &e. Now the word soul among the Jews, being so universally used to signify the person of man, they used the same word.to signify the person when he was dead, as well as when he was alive. Numb. vi. 6. " He shall conte at no dead body, in the
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