Gibb's Manual Lexicon [pp. 269-277]

Gibbs's Manual Lexicon.
efficacious operation of the Holy Spirit on the soul, exciting
and disposing to holy acts, is what we, and all of the old
Orthodox divines, call regeneration. Conversion, consequent
upon it, is man's own act. But to suppose that man is active
in the first production of his own spiritual life, is, we must
believe, either in the first rank of absurdities, or a virtual
adoption of the Arminian doctrine of the self-determining
power of the will-a doctrine which we do not believe Mr.
C. adopted; but which we cannot, for a moment doubt, is
really the basis of some old, but newly vamped and circulated
opinions, which we are aware have a plausible appearance in
view of many, but which, we trust, will have only a confined
and transient popularity in our country.
ART. IX.-GIBBS'S MANUAL LEXICON.
.d Manual Hebrew and English Lexicon, including the
biblical Chaldee. Designedparticularly for beginners.
By Josiah W. Gibbs, A. M. Professor of Sacred Litera ture in the Theological School in Yale College. Second
edition, revised and enlarged. New Haven. Hezekiah
Howe. 1832. 236 pp. 8vo.
WrE are heartily in favour both of manual lexicons and
manual grammars, as preliminary and auxiliary to more copious works of reference. The extreme opinions upon this
point will, we trust, be soon exploded, if they have not been
already, by the publication of a few such books as this.
Even adepts and proficients may congratulate themselves on
seeing scholars like Professor Gibbs employed in this way.
For ourselves, we must confess, that we are glad, now and
then, to escape from the leviathans of lexicography. If there
is a mental exercise which may be called laborious, it is that
of threading the inextricable mazes of a first rate lexicon.
After literally sweating through a few such articles as those
of Wahl upon the Greek prepositions, or almost any in Barker's New Thesaurus, in quest of something which we never
find, it is truly refreshing to escape into the columns of a
work containing a mere statement of results. In the one
case, we are treading the wine press of philology; in the
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