He who might claim this absolute power over the soul to be believed upon his bare word, yet seeing the sensuality of man and our woful distrust, is willing to allow us all the means of strengthening our souls in his promise, by such seals and witnesses as confirm it.—Rogers, Naaman the Syrian, p. 483.
A great number of people in divers parts of this realm, following their own sensuality, and living without knowledge and due fear of God, do wilfully and schismatically abstain and refuse to come to their own parish churches.—Act of Uniformity, 1662.
Servant. A wooer, follower, admirer, lover, not of necessity an accepted one, was a ‘servant’ in the chivalrous language of two or three centuries ago.
Valentine. Madam and mistress, a thousand good morrows.
Silvia. Sir Valentine and servant, to you two thousand.
Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, act ii. sc. 1.
’Tis more than I know if Mr. Freeman be my servant.... I cannot brag much that he makes any court to me.—Letters from Dorothy Osborne, Lett. 22 (ed. 1889).
Servility. The subjective abjectness and baseness of spirit of one who is a slave, or who acts as one, is always implied by this word at the present; while once it did but express the objective fact of an outwardly servile condition in him of whom it was predicated, leaving it possible that in spirit he might be free notwithstanding.
Such servility as the Jews endured under the Greeks and Asiatics, have they endured under the Saracen and the Turk.—Jackson, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures, b. i. c. 26.
We are no longer under the servility of the law of Moses, but are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.—H. More, The Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. viii. c. 6.