Shakespeare, King Richard II. act ii. sc. 3.
Tertullian seems to understand this baptism for the dead [1 Cor. xv. 29] de vicario baptismate, of baptism by an attorney, by a proxy, which should be baptized for me when I am dead.—Donne, Sermons, 1640, p. 794.
Authentic. A distinction drawn by Bishop Watson between ‘genuine’ and ‘authentic’ has been often quoted: ‘A genuine book is that which was written by the person whose name it bears as the author of it. An authentic book is that which relates matters of fact as they really happened.’ Of ‘authentic’ he has certainly not seized the true force, neither do the uses of it by good writers bear him out. The true opposite to αὐθεντικός in Greek is ἀδέσποτος, and ‘authentic’ is properly original, independent, and thus coming with authority, authoritative.[6] Thus, an ‘authentic’ document is, in its first meaning, a document written by the proper hand of him from whom it professes to proceed. In all the passages which follow it will be observed that the word might be exchanged for ‘authoritative.’
As doubted tenures, which long pleadings try,
Authentic grow by being much withstood.
Davenant, Gondibert, b. ii.
Should men be admitted to read Galen or Hippocrates, and yet the monopoly of medicines permitted to some one empiric or apothecary, not liable to any account, there might be a greater danger of poisoning than if these grand physicians had never written; for that might be prescribed them by such an authentic mountebank as a cordial, which the other had detected for poison.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, b. ii. c. 23.
Which letter in the copy his lordship read over, and carried the authentic with him.—Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii. p. 24.
It were extreme partiality and injustice, the flat denial and overthrow of herself [i.e. of Justice], to put her own authentic sword into the hand of an unjust and wicked man.—Milton, Εἰκονοκλάστης. c. 28.
[A father] to instil the rudiments of vice into the unwary flexible years of his poor children, poisoning their tender minds with the irresistible authentic venom of his base example!—South, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 190; cf. vol. viii. p. 171.