Answer: Though both are derived from «el (the latter strengthened, as the Stagirite tells us, by the participle of being, e.;y), the usage of the N. T. helps us to discern. These are the only two inspired occurrences of the former; and they are external, as compared with the deeper associations of the latter. The passage in Romans does not rise above what the natural mind might and ought to know, His invisible things apprehended through the things that are made, both His everlasting power and divinity (not His Godhead properly, which dwelt and dwells in Christ), so as to make them inexcusable if they turn to idols. The second of the two words is applied to the eternal God who reveals Himself in Christ and through the gospel as well as the church, as e.g. in chap. xvi. 26 of the same Epistle. But again the “everlasting chains,” in which He has kept and keeps the apostate angels under gloomy darkness, points to the judicial action of His power, not to His nature or His gracious counsels which befit or require the other word.