g to _authority_, or as an
emphatic pronoun in apposition with its noun, like _himself_ in the
preceding clause. In this general explanatory sense, _whatsoever_ may be
applied to persons as well as to things; as, "I should be sorry if it
entered into the imagination _of any person whatsoever_, that I was
preferred to all other patrons."--_Duncan's Cicero_, p. 11. Here the word
_whomsoever_ might have been used.

OBS. 13.--But there is an other construction to be here explained, in which
_whatever_ or _whatsoever_ appears to be a _double relative_, or a term
which includes both antecedent and relative; as, "_Whatever_ purifies,
fortifies also the heart."--_English Reader_, p. 23. That is. "_All that
purifies_--or, _Everything which_ purifies--fortifies also the heart."
"_Whatsoever_ he doeth, shall prosper."--_Psal._, i, 3. That is, "_All
that_ he doeth--or, _All the things which he doeth_--shall prosper." This
construction, however, may be supposed elliptical. The Latin expression is,
"_Omnia quaecumque faciet prosperabuntur_."--_Vulgate_. The Greek is
similar: [Greek: "Kai panta hosa an poiaei kateuodothaesetai."]--
_Septuagint_. It is doubtless by some sort of ellipsis which familiarity of
use inclines us to overlook, that _what, whatever_, and _whatsoever_, which
are essentially adjectives, have become susceptible of this double
construction as pronouns. But it is questionable what particular ellipsis
we ought here to suppose, or whether any; and certainly, we ought always to
avoid the supposing of an ellipsis, if we can.[192] Now if we say the
meaning is, "Whatsoever _things_ he doeth, shall prosper;" this, though
analogous to other expressions, does not simplify the construction. If we
will have it to be, "Whatsoever _things_ he doeth, _they_ shall prosper;"
the pronoun _they_ appears to be pleonastic. So is the word _it_, in the
text, "_Whatsoever_ he saith unto you, do _it_."--_John_, ii, 5. If we say
the full phrase is, "_All things_ whatsoever he doeth, shall prosper;" this
presents, to an English ear, a still more obvious pleonasm. It may be, too,
_a borrowed idiom_, found nowhere but in translations; as, "_All things
whatsoever_ ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive."--_Matt._,
xxi, 22. From these views, there seems to be some objection to any and
every method of parsing the above-mentioned construction as _elliptical_.
The learner may therefore say, in such instances, that _whatever_ or
_whatsoe