“principle of English Grammar,” so long and so widely inculcated by “the Rev. Peter Bullions, D. D., Professor of Languages,” &c.,—­a central principle of interpretation, presumed by him to hold “always”—­this participle must intimate “the present being of an act, not in progress, but completed;”—­that is, “the present being of” the apostles’ act in formerly seeing the risen Saviour!

OBS. 16.—­This grammarian has lately taken a deal of needless pains to sustain, by a studied division of verbs into two classes, similar to those which are mentioned in OBS. 13th above, a part of the philosophy of J. W. Wright, concerning our usual form of passives in the present tense.  But, as he now will have it, that the two voices sometimes tally as counterparts, it is plain that he adheres but partially to his former erroneous conception of a perfect or “past” participle, and the terms which hold it “in any connexion.”  The awkward substitutes proposed by the Irish critic, he does not indeed countenance; but argues against them still, and, in some respects, very justly.  The doctrine now common to these authors, on this point, is the highly important one, that, in respect to half our verbs, what we commonly take for the passive present, is not such—­that, in “the second class, (perhaps the greater number,) the present-passive implies that the act expressed by the active voice has ceased.  Thus, ’The house is built.’ * * * Strictly speaking, then,” says the Doctor, “the PAST PARTICIPLE with the verb TO BE is not the present tense in the passive voice of verbs thus used; that is, this form does not express passively the doing of the act.”—­Bullions’s Analyt. and Pract.  Grammar, Ed. of 1849, p. 235.  Thus far these two authors agree; except that Wright seems to have avoided the incongruity of calling that “the present-passive” which he denies to be such.  But the Doctor, approving none of this practitioner’s “remedies,” and being less solicitous to provide other treatment than expulsion for the thousands of present passives which both deem spurious, adds, as from the chair, this verdict:  “These verbs either have no present-passive, or it is made by annexing the participle in ing, in its passive sense, to the verb to be; as, ’The house is building.’”—­Ib., p. 236.

OBS. 17.—­It would seem, that Dr. Bullions thinks, and in reality Wright also, that nothing can be a present passive, but what “expresses passively the DOING of the act.”  This is about as wise, as to try to imagine every active verb to express actively the receiving of an act!  It borders exceedingly hard upon absurdity; it very much resembles the nonsense of “expressing receptively the giving of something!” Besides, the word “DOING,” being used substantively, does not determine well what is here meant; which is, I suppose, continuance, or