The acknowledging his perfections, works, and benefits. Praise and thanksgiving are generally considered as synonymous, yet some distinguish them thus. Praise properly terminates in God, on account of his natural excellencies and perfections, and is that act of devotion by which we confess and admire his several attributes: but thanksgiving is a more contracted duty, and imports only a grateful sense and acknowledgment of past mercies. We praise God for all his glorious acts of every kind, that regard either us or other men; for his very vengeance, and those judgments which he sometimes sends abroad in the earth; but we thank him, properly speaking, for the instances of his goodness alone, and for such only of these as we ourselves are some way concerned in.
See THANKSGIVING; Bishop Atterbury's Sermon on Psalms 50:14; Saurin's Sermons, vol. 1: ser. 14; Tillotson's Sermons, ser. 146. concl.