No; the atheist is too wise in his generation to make remonstrances and declarations of what he thinks. It is his heart and the little council that is held there, that is only privy to his monstrous opinions.—South, Sermons, 1744, vol. ix. p. 78.
| Remorse, | } |
| Remorseful. |
In ‘remorseless’ and in the phrase ‘without remorse,’ we retain a sense of ‘remorse’ as equivalent with pity, which otherwise has quite passed away from it. It may thus have acquired this meaning. There is nothing which is followed in natures not absolutely devilish with so swift revulsion of mind as acts of cruelty. Nowhere does the conscience so quickly sting the guilty actor as in and after these; and thus ‘remorse,’ which is the penitence of the natural man, the penitence not wrought by the spirit of grace, while it means the revulsion of the mind and conscience against any evil which has been done, came to mean predominantly revulsion against acts of cruelty, the pity which followed close on these; and thus pity in general, and not only as in this way called out.
King Richard by his own experience grew sensible of the miseries which merchants and mariners at sea underwent. Wherefore, now touched with remorse of their pitiful case, he resolved to revoke the law of wrecks.—Fuller, Holy War, b. iii. c. 7.
His helmet, justice, judgment, and remorse.
Middleton, Wisdom of Solomon, c. v. 17.
O Eglamour, thou art a gentleman,
Valiant, wise, remorseful, well accomplished.
Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iv. sc. 2.
Repeal. ‘To repeal’ (compare Old French ‘rapeler’) is to recall, and seldom or never applied now except to some statute or law, but formerly of far wider use.