The general usage of the French is like that of the English, _you_
for _thou_; but Spanish, Portuguese, or German politeness requires that the
third person be substituted for the second. And when they would be very
courteous, the Germans use also the plural for the singular, as _they_ for
_thou_. Thus they have a fourfold method of addressing a person: as,
_they_, denoting the highest degree of respect; _he_, a less degree; _you_,
a degree still less; and _thou_, none at all, or absolute reproach. Yet,
even among them, the last is used as a term of endearment to children, and
of veneration to God! _Thou_, in English, still retains its place firmly,
and without dispute, in all addresses to the Supreme Being; but in respect
to the _first person_, an observant clergyman has suggested the following
dilemma: "Some men will be pained, if a minister says _we_ in the pulpit;
and others will quarrel with him, if he says _I_."--_Abbott's Young
Christian_, p. 268.

OBS. 7.--Any extensive perversion of the common words of a language from
their original and proper use, is doubtless a matter of considerable
moment. These changes in the use of the pronouns, being some of them
evidently a sort of complimentary fictions, some religious people have made
it a matter of conscience to abstain from them, and have published their
reasons for so doing. But the _moral objections_ which may lie against such
or any other applications of words, do not come within the grammarian's
province. Let every one consider for himself the moral bearing of what he
utters: not forgetting the text, "But I say unto you, that _every idle
word_ that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of
judgement: for _by thy words_ thou shalt be justified, and _by thy words_
thou shalt be condemned."--_Matt._, xii, 36 and 37. What scruples this
declaration _ought to_ raise, it is not my business to define. But if such
be God's law, what shall be the reckoning of those who make no conscience
of uttering continually, or when they will, not idle words only, but
expressions the most absurd, insignificant, false, exaggerated, vulgar,
indecent, injurious, wicked, sophistical, unprincipled, ungentle, and
perhaps blasphemous, or profane?

OBS. 8.--The agreement of pronouns with their antecedents, it is necessary
to observe, is liable to be controlled or affected by several of the
figures of rhetoric. A noun used figuratively often suggests two different
senses, t