_."--_Gurney's Essays_, p. 88.
Perhaps the writer here exalts the inferior beings called gods, that he may
honour the one true God the more; but the Bible, in four editions to which
I have turned, gives the word _gods_ no capital. See _Psalms_, xcv, 3. The
word _Heaven_ put for God, begins with a capital; but when taken literally,
it commonly begins with a small letter. Several nouns occasionally
connected with names of the Deity, are written with a very puzzling
diversity: as, "The Lord of _Sabaoth_;"--"The Lord God of _hosts_;"--"The
God of _armies_;"--"The Father of _goodness_;"--"The Giver of all
_good_;"--"The Lord, the righteous _Judge_." All these, and many more like
them, are found sometimes with a capital, and sometimes without. _Sabaoth_,
being a foreign word, and used only in this particular connexion, usually
takes a capital; but the equivalent English words do not seem to require
it. For "_Judge_," in the last example, I would use a capital; for "_good_"
and "_goodness_," in the preceding ones, the small letter: the one is an
eminent name, the others are mere attributes. Alger writes, "_the Son of
Man_," with two capitals; others, perhaps more properly, "_the Son of
man_," with one--wherever that phrase occurs in the New Testament. But, in
some editions, it has no capital at all.

OBS. 6.--On Rule 4th, concerning _Proper Names_, it may be observed, that
the application of this principle supposes the learner to be able to
distinguish between proper names and common appellatives. Of the difference
between these two classes of words, almost every child that can speak, must
have formed some idea. I once noticed that a very little boy, who knew no
better than to call a pigeon a turkey because the creature had feathers,
was sufficiently master of this distinction, to call many individuals by
their several names, and to apply the common words, _man, woman, boy,
girl_, &c., with that generality which belongs to them. There is,
therefore, some very plain ground for this rule. But not all is plain, and
I will not veil the cause of embarrassment. It is only an act of imposture,
to pretend that grammar _is easy_, in stead of making it so. Innumerable
instances occur, in which the following assertion is by no means true: "The
distinction between a common and a proper noun is _very
obvious_."--_Kirkham's Gram._, p 32. Nor do the remarks of this author, or
those of any other that I am acquainted with, remove any part of the