This visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance in that invisible fabric.—Sir T. Browne, Religio Medici.
Which [courage and constancy] he that wanteth is no other than equivocally a gentleman, as an image or a carcass is a man.—Barrow, Sermon on Industry in our several Callings.
He [the good herald] knows when indeed the names are the same, though altered through variety of writing in various ages; and where the equivocation is untruly affected.—Fuller, The Holy State, b. ii. c. 22.
All words, being arbitrary signs, are ambiguous; and few disputers have the jealousy and skill which is necessary to discuss equivocations; and so take verbal differences for material.—Baxter, Catholic Theology, Preface.
| Err, | } |
| Error. |
‘To err’ is still to wander; but it is now used always in a figurative and ethical sense, to deviate morally from the right way. In my first quotation from Chapman, it is Telemachus who speaks, and of course Ulysses of whom he speaks.
To thy knees therefore I am come, to attend
Relation of the sad and wretched end
My erring father felt.
Chapman, Homer’s Odysseis, b. iv. 435.