An inquiry into the existence of a personal devil / [By John Epps.

Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the existence of a personal devil / [By John Epps. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    67 And the apostle James calls upon the brethren, a 204 Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations:55 The word is 7rcipacrp6is, peirasmois. He adds, “205 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience/5 The phrase for trying is not neipdfa, but Tvepnrecrr^Te, peripesete, which means “testing,” not merely “trying” How, if temptations were evil things, could James invite Christians to count it all joy when they fell into divers of them? All these passages establish this, that the proper meaning of the word Tveipaagos is trial; of 7Teipd£co, try. The objection to the words, temptation and tempt, would not be so great, if custom had not associated with them improper meanings: but all that is necessary, is, that the words should be translated uniformly throughout. One would infer from the frequent occurence, in common conversation, of the phrases, tempted, temptation, that the words occurred hi almost every page of the Bible, whereas the fact is, that the word temptation does not occur more than twenty-one times in the New Testament. And in all the cases, the passages would be much more clear, if the word trial, as the word is rendered in passages already quoted, were introduced in its place. Having thus demonstrated that the word, ireipacrpos, means trial, and that temptation is not the meaning, the next step in the inquiry, necessary to make clear to the understanding the trials of the Lord in the wilderness, will be to examine the source of trial.