Thy womb, that all doth breed, is tomb to all.
Davison, Poetical Rhapsody, p. 256.
| Secure, | } |
| Securely, | |
| Security. |
In our present English the difference between ‘safe’ and ‘secure’ is hardly recognized, but once it was otherwise. ‘Secure’ (‘securus,’ from sē- + cura) was subjective; it was a man’s own sense, well grounded or not, of the absence of danger; ‘safe’ was objective, the actual fact of such absence of danger. A man, therefore, might not be ‘safe,’ just because he was ‘secure’ (thus see Judges xviii. 7, 10, 27, and Paradise Lost, iv. 791). I may observe that our use of ‘secure’ at Matt. xxviii. 14, is in fact this early, though we may easily read the passage as though it were employed in the modern sense. ‘We will secure you’ of our Version represents ἀμερίμνους ὑμᾶς ποιήσομεν of the original.
My wanton weakness did herself betray
With too much play.
I was too bold; he never yet stood safe
That stands secure.
Quarles, Emblems, ii. 14.
We cannot endure to be disturbed or awakened from our pleasing lethargy. For we care not to be safe, but to be secure.—Bishop Taylor, Of Slander and Flattery.