Wherefore God hath detested them with his own mouth, and clean given them over unto their own filthy lusts.—Bale, The Image of both Churches, c. 11.
She cast herself upon him [her dead husband], and with fearful cries detested the governor’s inhuman and cruel deceit.—Grimeston, History of Lewis XI., 1614, p. 228.
Satyrs were certain poems, detesting and reproving the misdemeanours of people and their vices.—Holland, Explanation of certain obscure words.
Shakespeare, Cymbeline, act ii. sc. 5.
Diamond. This, or ‘diamant’ as it used to be spelt, is a popular form of ‘adamant.’ The Greek ἀδάμας, originally used of the hardest steel, was, about the time of Theophrastus, and, so far as we know, first in his writings, transferred to the diamond, as itself also of a hardness not to be subdued; the cutting or polishing of this stone being quite a modern invention; and the Latin ‘adamas’ continued through the Middle Ages to bear this double meaning. But if ‘adamant’ meant diamond, then ‘diamond,’ by a reactive process frequent in language, would be employed for adamant as well. So far as I know, Milton is the last writer who so uses it.
Romaunt of the Rose.
This little care and regard did at length melt and break asunder those strong diamond chains with which Dionysius the elder made his boast that he left his tyranny chained to his son.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, 1656, p. 800.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, i. 6. 4.
Spenser, ib. i. 9. 19.
Zeal, whose substance is ethereal, arming in complete diamond, ascends his fiery chariot drawn with two blazing meteors, figured like beasts, but of a higher breed than any the zodiack yields, resembling two of those four, which Ezekiel and St. John saw, the one visaged like a lion to express power, high authority, and indignation; the other of countenance like a man to cast derision and scorn upon perverse and fraudulent seducers; with these the invincible warrior Zeal shaking loosely the slack reins drives over the heads of scarlet prelates, and such as are insolent to maintain traditions, bruising their stiff necks under his flaming wheels.—Milton, Defence of Smectymnuus.
Id., Paradise Lost, vi. 363.
| Diffidence, | } |
| Diffidently. |
‘Diffidence’ expresses now a not unbecoming distrust of one’s own self, with only a slight intimation, such as ‘verecundia’ obtained in the silver age of Latin literature, that perhaps this distrust is carried too far; but it was once used for distrust of others, and sometimes for distrust pushed so far as to amount to an entire withholding of all faith from them, being nearly allied to despair; as indeed in The Pilgrim’s Progress Mistress Diffidence is Giant Despair’s wife.
Of the impediments which have been in the affections, the principal whereof hath been despair or diffidence, and the strong apprehension of the difficulty, obscurity, and infiniteness, which belongeth to the invention of knowledge.—Bacon, Of the Interpretation of Nature, c. 19.
Every sin smiles in the first address, and carries light in the face, and honey in the lip; but when we have well drunk, then comes that which is worse, a whip with ten strings, fears and terrors of conscience, and shame and displeasure, and a caitiff disposition, and diffidence in the day of death.—Bishop Taylor, Life of Christ.
That affliction grew heavy upon me, and weighed me down even to a diffidence of God’s mercy.—Donne, Sermons, 1640, vol. i. p. 311.
Mediators were not wanting that endeavoured a renewing of friendship between these two prelates, which the haughtiness, or perhaps the diffidence of Bishop Laud would not accept; a symptom of policy more than of grace, not to trust a reconciled enemy.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, pt. ii. p. 86.
It was far the best course to stand diffidently against each other, with their thoughts in battle array.—Hobbes, Thucydides, b. iii. c. 83.
Digest. Scholars of the seventeenth century often employ a word of their own language in the same latitude which its equivalent possessed in the Greek or the Latin; as though it entered into all the rights of its equivalent, and corresponded with it on all points, because it corresponded in one. Thus ‘coctus’ meaning ‘digested,’ why should not ‘digested’ mean all which ‘coctus’ meant? but one of the meanings of ‘coctus’ is ‘ripened;’ ‘digested’ therefore might be employed in the same sense.
Repentance is like the sun; it produces rich spices in Arabia, it digests the American gold, and melts the snows from the Riphæan mountains.—Bishop Taylor, Doctrine and Practice of Repentance, ch. 10, § 8.
Splendid fires, aromatic spices, rich wines, and well-digested fruits.—Id., Discourse of Friendship.
Disable. Our ancestors felt that to injure the character of another was the most effectual way of disabling him; and out of a sense of this they often used ‘to disable’ in the sense of to disparage, to speak slightingly of.
Farewell, mounsieur traveller. Look, you lisp, and wear strange suits: disable all the benefits of your own country.—Shakespeare, As You Like It, act. iv. sc. 1.
If affection lead a man to favour the less worthy in desert, let him do it without depraving or disabling the better deserver.—Bacon, Essays, 49.
Discourse. It is very characteristic of the slight acquaintance with our elder literature—the most obvious source for elucidating Shakespeare’s text—which was possessed by many of his commentators down to a late day, that the phrase ‘discourse of reason,’ which he puts into Hamlet’s mouth, should have perplexed them so greatly. Gifford, a pitiless animadverter on the real or imaginary mistakes of others, and who tramples upon Warburton for attempting to explain this phrase as though Shakespeare could have ever written it, declares ‘“discourse of reason” is so poor and perplexed a phrase that I should dismiss it at once for what I believe to be his genuine language;’ and then proceeds to suggest the obvious but erroneous correction ‘discourse and reason’ (see his Massinger, vol. i. p. 148); while yet, if there be a phrase of continual recurrence among the writers of our Elizabethan age and down to Milton, it is this. I have little doubt that it occurs fifty times in Holland’s translation of Plutarch’s Moralia. What our fathers intended by ‘discourse’ and ‘discourse of reason,’ the following passages will abundantly declare.
There is not so great difference and distance between beast and beast, as there is odds in the matter of wisdom, discourse of reason, and use of memory between man and man.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 570; cf. pp. 313, 566, 570, 752, 955, 966, 977, 980.
If you mean, by discourse, right reason, grounded on Divine Revelation and common notions, written by God in the hearts of all men, and deducing, according to the never-failing rules of logic, consequent deductions from them; if this be it which you mean by discourse, it is very meet and reasonable and necessary that men, as in all their actions, so especially in that of greatest importance, the choice of their way to happiness, should be left unto it.—Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants, Preface.
As the intuitive knowledge is more perfect than that which insinuates itself into the soul gradually by discourse, so more beautiful the prospect of that building which is all visible at one view than what discovers itself to the sight by parcels and degrees.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Canterbury.
Milton, Paradise Lost, v. 486.
You, being by nature given to melancholic discoursing, do easilier yield to such imaginations.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 830.
Chapman, Homer’s Iliad, b. ii.
Discover. This word has lost the sense of uncover, which once it had, and in which it occurs several times in our Bible.
Whether any man hath pulled down or discovered any church, chancel or chapel, or any part of them.—Archbishop Grindal, Articles of Enquiry, 1576.
The voice of the Lord discovereth the forests.—Ps. xxix. 9. A.V. and P.B.V.
Disease. Our present limitation of ‘disease’ is a very natural one, seeing that nothing so effectually wars against ease as a sick and suffering condition of body. Still the limitation is modern, and by ‘disease’ was once meant any distress or discomfort whatever, and the verb had a corresponding meaning.
Wo to hem that ben with child, and norishen in tho daies, for a greet diseese [pressura magna, Vulg.] schal be on the erthe and wraththe to this puple.—Luke xxi. 23. Wiclif.
Thy doughter is deed; why diseasest thou the master eny further?—Mark v. 35. Tyndale.
This is now the fourteenth day they [the Cardinals] have been in the Conclave, with such pain and disease that your grace would marvel that such men as they would suffer it.—State Papers (Letter to Wolsey from his Agent at Rome), vol. vi. p. 182.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 2, 12.
Dismal. Minsheu’s derivation of ‘dismal,’ that it is ‘dies malus,’ the unlucky, ill-omened day, is exactly one of those plausible etymologies which one learns after a while to reject with contempt. Yet there can be no doubt that our fathers so understood the word, and that this assumed etymology often overrules their usage of it.
Why should we then be bold to call them evil, infortunate, and dismal days? If God rule our doings continually, why shall they not prosper on those days as well as on other?—Pilkington, Exposition on Aggeus, c. 1.
Then began they to reason and debate about the dismal days [tum de diebus religiosis agitari cœptum]. And the fifteenth day before the Kalends of August, so notorious for a twofold loss and overthrow, they set this unlucky mark upon it, that it should be reputed unmeet and unconvenient for any business, as well public as private.—Holland, Livy, p. 217.
The particular calendars, wherein their [the Jews’] good or dismal days are distinguished, according to the diversity of their ways, we find, Leviticus 26.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, b. i. c. 22.
Disoblige. Release from obligation lies at the root of all uses, present and past, of this word; but it was formerly more the release from an oath or a duty, and now rather from the slighter debts of social life, to which kindness and courtesy on the part of another would have held us bound or ‘obliged;’ while the contraries to these are ‘disobliging.’
He did not think that Act of Uniformity could disoblige them [the Non-Conformists] from the exercise of their office.—Bates, Mr. Richard Baxter’s Funeral Sermon.
Many that are imprisoned for debt, think themselves disobliged from payment.—Bishop Taylor, Holy Dying, c. 5, § 3.
He hath a very great obligation to do that and more; and he can noways be disobliged, but by the care of his natural relations.—Id., Measures and Offices of Friendship.
Ditty. By the ‘ditty’ were once understood the words of a song as distinguished from the musical accompaniment.
They fell to challenge and defy one another, whereupon he commanded the musician Eraton to sing unto the harp, who began his song on this wise out of the works of Hesiodus:—
for which I commended him in that he knew how to apply the ditty of his song so well unto the present time.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 786.
So that, although we lay altogether aside the consideration of ditty or matter, the very harmony of sounds being framed in due sort, and carried by the ear to the spiritual faculties of the soul, is by a native puissance and efficacy greatly available to bring to a perfect temper whatsoever is there troubled.—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. v. c. 38.
Document. Now used only of the material, and not, as once, of the moral proof, evidence, or means of instruction.
They were forthwith stoned to death, as a document unto others.—Sir W. Raleigh, History of the World, b. v. c. 2, § 3.
This strange dejection of these three great apostles at so mild and gentle a voice [Matt. xvii. 6], gives us a remarkable document or grounded observation of the truth of that saying of St. Paul, Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.—Jackson, Of the Primeval State of Man, b. ii. c. 12.
It was a rare document of divine justice to ordain, and of divine wisdom so to contrive, that the dogs should lap King Ahab’s blood in the same place where they had lapped the blood of Naboth.—Id., Of the Divine Essence and Attributes, b. vi. ch. iii. 3.
Dole. This and ‘deal’ are one and the same word, and answer to the German ‘Theil,’ a part or portion.14 It has now always the subaudition of a scanty portion, as ‘to dole’ is to deal scantily and reluctantly forth (‘pittance’ has acquired the same); but Sanderson’s use of ‘dole’ is instructive, as showing that ‘distribution or division’ is all which once lay in the word.
There are certain common graces of illumination, and those indeed are given by dole, knowledge to one, to another tongues, to another healings; but it is nothing so with the special graces of sanctification. There is no distribution or division here; either all or none.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671, vol. ii. p. 247.
Draught. Many ‘draughts’ we still acknowledge, but not the ‘draught’ or drawing of a bow.
Chaucer, Dreame, 788.
Chapman, The Odysseis of Homer, xxi. 533.
Dreadful. Now that which causes dread, but once that which felt it. See ‘Frightful,’ ‘Hateful.’
Forsothe the Lord shall gyve to thee there a dreedful herte and faylinge eyen.—Deut. xxviii. 65. Wiclif.
Chaucer, The Knightes Tale.
Heywood, Translation of Seneca’s Hercules Furens.
Daniel, Panegyric to the King.
| Dreary, | } |
| Dreariness. |
This word has slightly shifted its meaning. In our earlier English it was used exactly as its German cognate ‘traurig’ is now, to designate the heaviness at once of countenance and of heart; very much the σκυθρωπός of the Greeks, though not admitting the subaudition of anger, which in that word is often contained. [Its Old English form was dréorig.]
And the king seide to me, Whi is thi chere dreri, sithen I see thee not sick?—2 Esdras ii. 2. Wiclif.
Chaucer, The Clerkes Tale, pt. 3.
Bowe down to the pore thin ere withoute dreryness [sine tristitiâ, Vulg.]—Ecclus. iv. 8. Wiclif.
Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 1454.
Drench. As ‘to fell’ is to make to fall, and ‘to lay’ to make to lie, so ‘to drench’ is to make to drink, though with a sense now very short of ‘to drown;’ but ‘drench’ and ‘drown,’ though desynonymized in our later English, were once perfectly adequate to one another.
Havelok the Dane, 669.
Thei that wolen be maad riche, fallen in to temptacioun, and in to snare of the devil, and in to many unprofitable desiris and noyous, whiche drenchen men in to deth and perdicioun.—1 Tim. vi. 9. Wiclif.
Chaucer, The Man of Lawes Tale, 488 (Skeat).
Drift. A drove of sheep or cattle was once a ‘drift;’ so too the act of driving.
Hoc armentum, Anglice, a dryfte.—Wright-Wülcker, Vocab. 814. 11.
By reason of the foulness and deepness of the way divers of the said sheep died in driving; partly for lack of meat and feeding, but especially by mean of the said unreasonable drift the said sheep are utterly perished.—Trevelyan Papers, p. 130.
Scotch Ballad.
Duke. One of Shakespeare’s commentators charges him with an anachronism, the incongruous transfer of a modern title to an ancient condition of society, when he styles Theseus ‘Duke of Athens.’ It would be of very little consequence if the charge was a true one; but it is not, as his English Bible might have sufficiently taught him; Gen. xxxvi. 15-19. ‘Duke’ has indeed since Shakespeare’s time become that which this objector supposed it to have been always; but all were ‘dukes’ once who were ‘duces,’ captains and leaders of their people.
He [St. Peter] techith christen men to be suget to kyngis and dukis, and to ech man for God.—Wiclif, Prologe on the first Pistel of Peter.
Hannibal, duke of Carthage.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. i. c. 10.
Chapman, Homer’s Iliad, b. ii.
Dunce. I have sought elsewhere (Study of Words, 20th edit. p. 143) to trace at some length the curious history of this word. Sufficient here to say that Duns Scotus, whom Hooker styles ‘the wittiest of the school divines,’ has given us this name, which now ascribes hopeless ignorance, invincible stupidity, to him on whom it is affixed. The course by which this came to pass was as follows. When at the Reformation and Revival of Learning the works of the Schoolmen fell into extreme disfavour, alike with the Reformers and with the votaries of the new learning, Duns, a standard-bearer among those, was so often referred to with scorn and contempt by these, that his name gradually became that byeword which ever since it has been. See the quotation from Stanyhurst, s. v. ‘Trivial.’
Remember ye not how within this thirty years, and far less, and yet dureth unto this day, the old barking curs, Dunce’s disciples, and like draff called Scotists, the children of darkness, raged in every pulpit against Greek, Latin, and Hebrew?—Tyndale, Works, 1575, p. 278.
We have set Dunce in Bocardo and have utterly banished him Oxford for ever with all his blind glosses.... The second time we came to New College after we had declared your injunctions, we found all the great Quadrant Court full of the leaves of Dunce, the wind blowing them in every corner.—Wood’s Annals, A.D. 1535, 62.
What Dunce or Sorbonist cannot maintain a paradox?—G. Harvey, Pierce’s Supererogation, p. 159.
As for terms of honesty or civility, they are gibberish unto him, and he a Jewish Rabbin or a Latin dunce with him that useth any such form of monstrous terms.—Id., ib. p. 175.
Middleton, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, act iii. sc. 1.
| Dutch, | } |
| Dutchman. |
Till late in the seventeenth century ‘Dutch’ (‘deutsch,’ lit. belonging to the people) meant generally ‘German,’ and a ‘Dutchman’ a native of Germany, while what we now term a Dutchman was then a Hollander. In America this with so many other usages is retained, and Germans are now often called ‘Dutchmen’ there.
Though the root of the English language be Dutch, yet she may be said to have been inoculated afterwards upon a French stock.—Howell, Lexicon Tetraglotton, Preface.
Germany is slandered to have sent none to this war [the Crusades] at this first voyage; and that other pilgrims, passing through that country, were mocked by the Dutch, and called fools for their pains.—Fuller, Holy War, b. i. c. 13.
At the same time began the Teutonic Order, consisting only of Dutchmen, well descended.—Id. ib. b. ii. c. 16.
| Eager, | } |
| Eagerness. |
The physical and literal sense of ‘eager,’ that is, sharp or acrid (Fr. aigre, Lat. acrem), has quite departed from the word. It occasionally retained this, long after it was employed in the secondary meaning which is its only one at present.
Romaunt of the Rose, 215.
Bees have this property by nature to find and suck the mildest and best honey out of the sharpest and most eager flowers.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 43.
Chapman, Homer’s Iliad, b. x.
Asproso, full of sowrenesse or eagernesse.—Florio, New World of Words (A.D. 1611).
Ebb. Nothing ‘ebbs,’ unless it is figuratively, except water now. But ‘ebb,’ oftenest an adjective, was continually used in our earlier English with a general meaning of shallow. There is still a Lancashire proverb, ‘Cross the stream where it is ebbest.’
Orpiment, a mineral digged out of the ground in Syria, where it lieth very ebb.—Holland, Pliny, vol. ii. p. 469.
This you may observe ordinarily in stones, that those parts and sides which lie covered deeper within the ground be more frim and tender, as being preserved by heat, than those outward faces which lie ebb, or above the earth.—Id., Plutarch’s Morals, p. 747.
It is all one whether I be drowned in the ebber shore, or in the midst of the deep sea.—Bishop Hall, Meditations and Vows, cent. ii.
Ecstasy. We still say of madmen that they are beside themselves; but ‘ecstasy,’ or a standing out of oneself, is no longer used as an equivalent to madness.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, act iii. sc. 4.
Edify. ‘From the Christian Church being called the temple or house of God, this word acquired a metaphorical and spiritual meaning, and is applied in the N. T. and in modern language to mental or spiritual advancement. Old English writers used it in its original sense of build’ (Bible Word Book). For some quotations which mark the coming up of the secondary or metaphorical meaning see my English Past and Present, 14th edit. p. 186.
Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus xvi. 131 (Skeat).
And the Lord God edifiede the rib, the which he toke of Adam, into a woman.—Gen. ii. 22. Wiclif.
What pleasure and also utility is to a man which intendeth to edify, himself to express the figure of the work that he purposeth, according as he hath conceived it in his own fantasy.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. i. c. 8.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, i. 1, 34.
Egregious. This has generally now an uncomplimentary subaudition, which it was very far from having of old.
Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, part i. act i. sc. 1.
It may be denied that bishops were our first reformers, for Wickliffe was before them, and his egregious labours are not to be neglected.—Milton, Animadversions upon the Remonstrants’ Defence.
Elder. The German ‘eltern’ still signifies parents; as ‘elders’ did once with us, though now the word has quite let this meaning go.
And hise disciplis axiden hym, Maistir, what synnede, this man or hise eldris, that he schulde be borun blynd?—John ix. 2. Wiclif.
And his elders went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of Easter.—Luke ii. 41. Coverdale.
Disobedient to their elders [γονεῦσιν ἀπειθεῖς].—Rom. i. 30. Coverdale.
Sylvester, Du Bartas, The Handycrafts.
Element. The air, as that among the four elements which is most present everywhere, was frequently ‘the element’ in our earlier literature.
When Pompey saw the dust in the element, and conjectured the flying of his horsemen, what mind he was of then it was hard to say.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 553.
The face therefore of the element you have skill to discern, and the signs of times can you not?—Matt. xvi. 3. Rheims.
Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar, act i. sc. 3.
Milton, Comus, 298.
Elephant. I have little doubt that ‘elephant’ as an equivalent for ivory is a Grecism not peculiar to Chapman, in whose translations from Homer it several times occurs; but I cannot adduce an example from any other. The use of ‘olifant’ in this sense is quite common in the older French (see Didot’s Glossary in Ducange, ed. 1887).
Chapman, The Odysseis of Homer, b. xxiii. l. 306.
Elevate. There are two intentions with which anything may be lifted from the place which it occupies; either with that of setting it in a more conspicuous position; or else of removing it out of the way, or, figuratively, of withdrawing all importance and significance from it. We employ ‘to elevate’ now in the former intention; our ancestors for the most part, especially those whose style was influenced by their Latin studies, in the latter.
Withal, he forgat not to elevate as much as he could the fame of the foresaid unhappy field fought, saying, That if all had been true, there would have been messengers coming thick one after another upon their flight to bring fresh tidings still thereof.—Holland, Livy, p. 1199.
Audience he had with great assent and applause; not more for elevating the fault and trespass of the common people, than for laying the weight upon those that were the authors culpable.—Id., ib. p. 1207.
Tully in his oration Pro Flacco, to elevate or lessen that conceit which many Romans had of the nation of the Jews, objects little less unto them than our Saviour in this place doth, to wit that they were in bondage to the Romans.—Jackson, Of the Primeval Estate of Man, b. x. c. 14.
Embezzle. A man can now only ‘embezzle’ another man’s property; he might once ‘embezzle’ his own. Thus, while we might now say that the Unjust Steward ‘embezzled’ his lord’s goods (Luke xvi. 1), we could not say that the Prodigal Son ‘embezzled’ the portion which he had received from his father, and which had thus become his own (Luke xv. 13); but the one would have been as free to our early writers as the other. There is a form, ‘to imbecile,’ used by Jeremy Taylor and others, which has the same meaning as this word.
Mr. Hackluit died, leaving a fair estate to an unthrift son, who embezzled it.—Fuller, Worthies of England: Herefordshire.
The collection of these various readings [is] a testimony even of the faithfulness of these later ages of the Church, and of the high reverence they had of these records, in that they would not so much as embesell the various readings of them, but keep them still on foot for the prudent to judge of.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. vii. c. 11.
If we are ambitious of having a property in somewhat, or affect to call anything our own, ’tis only by nobly giving that we can accomplish our desire; that will certainly appropriate our goods to our use and benefit; but from basely keeping or vainly embezzling them, they become not our possession and enjoyment, but our theft and our bane.—Barrow, The Duty and Reward of Bounty to the Poor.
Be not prodigal of your time on earth, which is so little in your power. ’Tis so precious a thing that it is to be redeemed; ’tis therefore too precious to be embezzled and trifled away.—Howe, The Redeemer’s Dominion over the Invisible World.
Emulation. South in one of his sermons has said excellently well, ‘We ought by all means to note the difference between envy and emulation; which latter is a brave and noble thing, and quite of another nature, as consisting only in a generous imitation of something excellent; and that such an imitation as scorns to fall short of its copy, but strives if possible to outdo it. The emulator is impatient of a superior, not by depressing or maligning another but by perfecting himself. So that while that sottish thing envy sometimes fills the whole soul, as a great fog does the air: this on the contrary inspires it with a new life and vigour, whets and stirs up all the powers of it to action.’ But ‘emulation,’ though sometimes used by our early writers in this nobler sense, to express an honourable and generous rivalry, was by no means always so; it was often an exact equivalent to envy.
Zeal to promote the common good is welcomed with suspicion instead of love, and with emulation instead of thanks.—The Translators’ Preface to the Authorized Version.
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, act i. sc. 3.
And the patriarchs through emulation [moved with envy, A.V.] sold Joseph into Egypt.—Acts vii. 9. Rheims.
Endeavour. This, connected with ‘devoir,’ is used as a reflexive verb in our version of the New Testament and in the Prayer Book. Signifying now no more than to try, it signified once to bend all our energies, not to the attempt at fulfilling, but to the actual fulfilment of a duty. The force of such passages as Ephes. iv. 3, ‘endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit,’ is greatly weakened by giving to ‘endeavour’ its modern sense. Attaching to it this, we may too easily persuade ourselves that the Apostle does no more than bid us to attempt to preserve this unity, and that he quite recognizes the possibility of our being defeated in this attempt.
This is called in Scripture ‘a just man,’ that endeavoureth himself to leave all wickedness.—Latimer, Sermons, p. 340.
One thing I do, I forget that which is behind, and endevour myself into that which is before.—Phil. iii. 13. Geneva.
Engrave. This word has now quite lost the sense of ‘to bury,’ which it once possessed. See ‘Grave.’