NETTLES

We find this name given to two different words in the original. The first is חרול , Job xxx, 7; Proverbs xxiv, 31; Zeph. ii, 9. It is not easy to determine what species of plant is here meant. From the pa age in Job, the nettle could not be intended; for a plant is referred to large enough for people to take shelter under. The following extract from Denon’s Travels may help to illustrate the text, and show to what an uncomfortable retreat those vagabonds must have resorted. One of the inconveniences of the vegetable thickets of Egypt is, that it is difficult to remain in them; as nine-tenths of the trees and the plants are armed with inexorable thorns, which suffer only an unquiet enjoyment of the shadow which is so constantly desirable, from the precaution nece ary to guard against them.” The קימוש , Prov. xxiv, 31; Isaiah xxxiv, 13; Hosea ix, 6; is by the Vulgate rendered urtica ,” which is well defended by Celsius, and very probably means the nettle.” NICE or NICENE CREED is so denominated, because the greater part of it, namely, as far as the words, Holy Ghost,” was drawn up and agreed to at the council of Nice, or Nicæa, in Bithynia, A. D. 325. This council was a embled against Arius, who, though he brought down the Son to the condition of a creature, inferior, for that reason, in nature to the Father, yet acknowledged his personal subsistence before the world, and his superiority in nature to all the things that were created by him. So that there was need of some higher expre ion in this case than the other, to import his equal dignity of nature with the Father and Creator of all; and nothing was found to answer the purpose so well as the term ὁμοούσιος. The rest of this creed was added at the council of Constantinople, A. D. 581, except the words, and the Son,” which follow the words, who proceed eth from the Father,” and they were inserted A. D. 447. The addition made at Constantinople was caused by the denial of the divinity of the Holy Ghost by Maced on i us and his followers; and the creed, thus enlarged, was immediately received by all orthodox Christians. The insertion of the words, and the Son,” was made by the Spanish bishops; and they were soon after adopted by the Christians in France. The bishops of Rome for some time refused to admit these words into the creed; but at last, A. D. 883, when Nicholas the First was pope, they were allowed, and from that time they have stood in the Nicene creed, in all the western churches; but the Greek church has never received them. See Arius .