syntax a very queer distinction is apparently made between a passive verb, and the participle chiefly constituting it; and here, too, through a fancied ellipsis of “being” before the latter, most, if not all, of his other positions concerning passives, are again disastrously overthrown by something worse—­a word “imperceptibly understood.” “‘I am smitten;’ ‘I was smitten;’ &c., are,” he says, “the universally acknowledged forms of the VERBS in these tenses, in the passive voice:—­not of the PARTICIPLE.  In all verbal constructions of the character of which we have hitherto treated, (see page 103) and, where the ACTIONS described are continuous in their operations,—­the participle BEING is imperceptibly omitted, by ellipsis.”—­P. 144.

OBS. 15.—­Dr. Bullions has stated, that, “The present participle active, and the present participle passive, are not counterparts to each other in signification; [,] the one signifying the present doing, and the other the present suffering of an action, [;] for the latter always intimates the present being of an ACT, not in progress, but completed.”—­Prin. of Eng.  Gram., p. 58.  In this, he errs no less grossly than in his idea of the “action or the suffering” expressed by “a perfect participle,” as cited in OBS. 5th above; namely, that it must have ceased.  Worse interpretation, or balder absurdity, is scarcely to be met with; and yet the reverend Doctor, great linguist as he should be, was here only trying to think and tell the common import of a very common sort of English participles; such as, “being loved” and “being seen.”  In grammar, “an act,” that has “present being,” can be nothing else than an act now doing, or “in progress;” and if, “the present being of an ACT not in progress,” were here a possible thought, it surely could not be intimated by any such participle.  In Acts, i, 3 and 4, it is stated, that our Saviour showed himself to the apostles, “alive after his passion, by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God; and, being assembled together with them commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem.”  Now, of these misnamed “present participles,” we have here one “active,” one “passive,” and two others—­(one in each form—­) that are neuter; but no present time, except what is in the indefinite date of “pertaining.”  The events are past, and were so in the days of St. Luke.  Yet each of the participles denotes continuance:  not, indeed, in or to the present time, but for a time. “Being seen” means continuing to be seen; and, in this instance, the period of the continuance was “forty days” of time past.  But, according to the above-cited