RULE VI.—­SAME CASES.

A Noun or a Pronoun put after a verb or participle not transitive, agrees in case with a preceding noun or pronoun referring to the same thing:  as, “It is I.”—­“These are they.”—­“The child was named John.”—­“It could not be he.”—­“The Lord sitteth King forever.”—­Psalms, xxix, 10.

   “What war could ravish, commerce could bestow,
    And he return’d a friend, who came a foe.”
        —­Pope, Ep. iii, l. 206.

OBSERVATIONS ON RULE VI.

OBS. 1.—­Active-transitive verbs, and their imperfect and preperfect participles, always govern the objective case; but active-intransitive, passive, and neuter verbs, and their participles, take the same case after as before them, when both words refer to the same thing.  The latter are rightly supposed not to govern[357] any case; nor are they in general followed by any noun or pronoun.  But, because they are not transitive, some of them become connectives to such words as are in the same case and signify the same thing.  That is, their finite tenses may be followed by a nominative, and their infinitives and participles by a nominative or an objective, agreeing with a noun or a pronoun which precedes them.  The cases are the same, because the person or thing is one; as, “I am he.”—­“Thou art Peter.”—­“Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent.”—­Jefferson’s Notes, p. 129.  Identity is both the foundation and the characteristic of this construction.  We chiefly use it to affirm or deny, to suggest or question, the sameness of things; but sometimes figuratively, to illustrate the relations of persons or things by comparison:[358] as, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.”—­John, xv, 1. “I am the vine, ye are the branches.”—­John, xv, 5.  Even the names of direct opposites, are sometimes put in the same case, under this rule; as,

   “By such a change thy darkness is made light,
    Thy chaos order, and thy weakness might.”—­Cowper, Vol. i, p. 88.

OBS. 2.—­In this rule, the terms after and preceding refer rather to the order of the sense and construction, than to the mere placing of the words; for the words in fact admit of various positions.  The proper subject of the verb is the nominative to it, or before it, by Rule 2d; and the other nominative, however placed, is understood to be that which comes after it, by Rule 6th.  In general, however, the proper subject precedes the verb, and the other word follows it, agreeably to the literal sense