And shortly comes to harvest.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, act ii. sc. 7.
| Sensual, | } |
| Sensuality. |
‘Sensual’ is employed now only in an ill meaning, and implies ever a predominance of sense in quarters where it ought not so to predominate. Milton, feeling that we wanted another word affirming this predominance where no such fault was implied by it, and that ‘sensual’ only imperfectly expressed this, employed, I know not whether he coined, ‘sensuous,’ a word which, if it had rooted itself in the language at once, might have proved of excellent service. ‘Sensuality’ has had always an ill meaning, but not always the same ill meaning which it has now. Any walking by sense and sight rather than by faith was ‘sensuality’ of old.
Hath not the Lord Jesus convinced thy sensual heart by sensual arguments? If thy sense were not left-handed, thou mightest with thy right hand bear down thine infidelity; for God hath given assurance sufficient by his Son to thy very sense, if though wert not brutish (1 John i. 1).—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 493.
There cannot always be that degree of sensual, pungent, or delectable affections towards religion as towards the desires of nature and sense.—Bishop Taylor, Life of Christ, part ii. § 12.
Far as creation’s ample range extends,
The scale of sensual, mental powers ascends.
Pope, Essay on Man, b. i.
I do take him to be a hardy captain; but yet a man more meet to be governed than to govern; for all his enterprizes be made upon his own sensuality, without the advice and counsel of those that been put in trust by the King’s Majesty.—State Papers, 1538, vol. iii. p. 95.