Truth is content, when it comes into the world, to wear our mantles, to learn our language: it speaks to the most idiotical sort of men in the most idiotical way. The reason of this plain and idiotical style of Scripture it may be worth our farther taking notice of.—Id., ibid.
| Ill-nature, | } |
| Ill-natured. |
This is now rather one special evil quality, as κακία is often in Greek; it was once the complex of all, or more properly the natural substratum on which they all were superinduced. See ‘Good-nature,’ and, in addition to the passage from South, quoted below, a very instructive discussion on both words in his Sermons, 1737, vol. vi. pp. 104-111.
I may truly say of the mind of an ungrateful person, that it is kindness-proof. It is inpenetrable, unconquerable; unconquerable by that which conquers all things else, even by love itself. And the reason is manifest; for you may remember that I told you that ingratitude sprang from a principle of ill-nature; which being a thing founded in such a certain constitution of blood and spirit, as being born with a man into the world, and upon that account called nature, shall prevent all remedies that can be applied by education.—South, Sermons, 1737, vol. i. p. 429.
King Henry the Eighth was an ill-natured prince to execute so many whom he had so highly favoured.—Sir T. Overbury, Crumbs fallen from King James’ Table.
He is the worst of men, whom kindness cannot soften, nor endearments oblige; whom gratitude cannot tie faster than the bands of life and death.—He is an ill-natured sinner.—Bishop Taylor, The Miracles of the Divine Mercy, serm. 27.
Imp. Employed in nobler senses formerly than now. ‘To imp’ is properly to engraft, and an ‘imp’ a graft, scion, or young shoot; and, even as we now speak of the ‘scions’ of a noble house, so there was in earlier English the same natural transfer of ‘imps’ from plants to persons.
I was sum-tyme a frere,
And the coventes gardyner for to graffe ympes.
Piers Plowman, B-text, Passus v. 136 (Skeat).