How this man
Bears up in blood; seems fearless! Why ’tis well:
Security some men call the suburbs of hell,
Only a dead wall between.
Webster, Duchess of Malfi, act v. sc. 2.
| Sedition, | } |
| Seditious. |
There was an attempt on the part of some scholarly writers at the beginning of the seventeenth century to keep ‘sedition’ true to its etymology, and to the meaning which ‘seditio’ bears in the Latin. This is the explanation of its employment as a rendering of διχοστασίαι, Gal. v. 21, as quoted below; which in our present English would be more accurately rendered, secessions, dissensions, or divisions; in exactly which sense ‘seditious’ is there used by our Translators. So too, when Satan, in the quotation given below, addresses Abdiel ‘seditious Angel,’ this is to find the same explanation, as is clear from the words which immediately follow. He the one faithful, taking the Lord’s side, had in so doing divided the ranks of those who adhered to the fallen Archangel, and separated from them, being therein ‘seditious.’ The quotation from Bishop Andrewes not less evidently shows how distinct in his mind ‘seditions’ were from those overt acts of petty treason which we now call by this name; however, they might often lead to such.
Whom you find thus magnifying of changes and projecting new plots for the people, be sure they are in the way to sedition. For (mark it) they do sedire, that is seorsim ire, go aside; they have their meetings apart about their new alterations. Now of sedire comes sedition, side-going. For if that be not looked to in time, the next news is, the blowing of a trumpet, and Sheba’s proclamation, We have no part in David. It begins in Shimei, it ends in Sheba.—Andrewes, Of the Gunpowder Treason, Serm. 6.
Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, ... seditions (in R.V. ‘divisions’).—Gal. v. 20, 21. (A.V.)
Ill for thee, but in wished hour