Lyndesay, The Monarchie.
Some took this for a glorious brag; others thought he [Alcibiades] was like enough to have done it.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 183.
Likewise glorious followers, who make themselves as trumpets of the commendation of those they follow, are full of inconveniences. For they taint business through want of secrecy; and they export honour from a man, and make him a return in envy.—Bacon, Essays, 48 (Abbott, ii. p. 66).
He [Anselm] little dreamt then that the weeding-hook of Reformation would after two ages pluck up his glorious poppy [prelacy] from insulting over the good corn [presbytery].—Milton, Reason of Church Government, b. i. c. 5.
I speak it not gloriously, or out of affectation.—Ben Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour, act ii. sc. 1.
| Good-nature, | } |
| Good-natured. |
As metaphysics have yielded us ‘common sense,’ and logic ‘formal’ and ‘formality,’ so we owe to theology ‘good-nature.’ By it our elder divines understood far more than we understand by it now; even all which it is possible for a man to have, without having the grace of God. The contrast between grace and nature was of course unknown to the Greeks; but, this being kept in mind, we may say that the ‘good-nature’ of our theology two centuries ago was as nearly as possible expressed by the εὐφυΐα of Aristotle (Eth. Nic. iii. 7; compare the ‘heureusement né’ of the French); the genial preparedness for the reception of every high teaching. In the paper of The Spectator, quoted below, which treats exclusively of ‘good-nature,’ the word is passing, but has by no means passed, into its modern meaning. See ‘Ill-nature.’
Good-nature, being the relics and remains of that shipwreck which Adam made, is the proper and immediate disposition to holiness. When good-nature is heightened by the grace of God, that which was natural becomes now spiritual.—Bishop Taylor, Sermon preached at the Funeral of Sir George Dalstone.
Good-nature! alas, where is it? Since Adam fell, there was never any such thing in rerum naturâ; if there be any good thing in any man, it is all from grace. We may talk of this and that, of good-natured men, and I know not what; but the very truth is, set grace aside (I mean all grace, both renewing grace and restraining grace), there is no more good-nature in any man than there was in Cain and in Judas. That thing which we use to call good-nature is indeed but a subordinate means or instrument, whereby God restraineth some men more than others, from their birth and special constitution, from sundry outrageous exorbitances, and so is a branch of this restraining grace whereof we now speak.—Sanderson, Sermons, 1671, vol. i. p. 279.
If any good did appear in the conversation of some men who followed that religion [the Pagan], it is not to be imputed to the influence of that, but to some better cause; to the relics of good-nature, to the glimmerings of natural light, or (perhaps also) to secret whispers and impressions of divine grace on some men’s minds vouchsafed in pity to them.—Barrow, Sermon 14 on the Apostles’ Creed.