SYNONYMS

OF

THE NEW TESTAMENT

BY

RICHARD CHEVENIX TRENCH, D.D.

PREFACE

This volume, not any longer a little one, has grown out of a course of lectures on the Synonyms of the New Testament, which, in the fulfilment of my duties as Professor of Divinity at King’s College, London, I more than once addressed to the theological students there. The long, patient, and exact studies in language of our great Schools and Universities, which form so invaluable a portion of their mental, and of their moral discipline as well, could find no place during the two years or two years and a half of the theological course at King’s College. The time itself was too short to allow this, and it was in great part claimed by more pressing studies. Yet, feeling the immense value of these studies, and how unwise it would be, because we could not have all which we would desire, to forego what was possible and within our reach, I two or three times dedicated a course of lectures to the comparative value of words in the New Testament—and these lectures, with many subsequent additions and some defalcations, have supplied the materials of the present volume. I have never doubted that (setting aside those higher and more solemn lessons, which in a great measure are out of our reach to impart, being taught rather by God than men), there are few things which a theological teacher should have more at heart than to awaken in his scholars an enthusiasm for the grammar and the lexicon. We shall have done much for those who come to us for theological training and generally for mental guidance, if we can persuade them to have these continually in their hands; if we can make them believe that with these, and out of these, they may be learning more, obtaining more real and lasting acquisitions, such as will stay by them, and form a part of the texture of their own minds for ever, that they shall from these be more effectually accomplishing themselves for their future work, than from many a volume of divinity, studied before its time, even if it were worth studying at all, crudely digested and therefore turning to no true nourishment of the intellect or the spirit.

Claiming for these lectures a wider audience than at first they had, I cannot forbear to add a few observations on the value of the study of synonyms, not any longer having in my eye the peculiar needs of any special body of students, but generally; and on that of the Synonyms of the New Testament in particular; as also on the helps to the study of these which are at present in existence; with a few further remarks which my own experience has suggested.

The value of this study as a discipline for training the mind into close and accurate habits of thought, the amount of instruction which may be drawn from it, the increase of intellectual wealth which it may yield, all this has been implicitly recognized by well-nigh all great writers—for well-nigh all from time to time have paused, themselves to play the dividers and discerners ...