If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, THE LORD THY GOD;
Ver. 58. This glorious and fearful name.] That Nomen maiestativum, as Bernard calleth it. The wiser sort of heathens acknowledged, Augustius esse de Deo sentiendum, quam ut nomen et imaginem eius passim ac temere usurpemus, that higher thoughts must be taken of God, than lightly and profanely to make use of his name, which no man may presume in a sudden unmannerliness to blurt out. a When they would swear by their Jupiter, they would break off their oath with a Mα τον, as those that only durst to owe the rest to their thoughts. The Greeks and Romans both worshipped the same Jupiter, but the Romans are therefore better thought of, because they ever thought and spake more reverently of him than the Greeks; as may be seen in Homer and Virgil. The Egyptians so honoured their Mercurius Trismegistus, that they held it not lawful to pronounce his name commonly and rashly. Tat, the son of this Trismegist, flourished in Egypt about the time that Moses wrote his Deuteronomy, as saith Eusebius.
a Hinc Pythagoricum illud, εν δακτυλιω Yεον εικονα μη περιφερεια - Suidas.