acumen
; grit, bran, and flour, were swallowed in the unsifted mass of their erudition. Still that a man like Donne should have imposed on himself such a set of idle tales, as he has collected in the next paragraph for facts of history, is scarcely credible; that he should have attempted to impose them on others, is most melancholy.
Ib.
p. 22. D. E.
He takes the name of the son of a woman, and wanes the miraculous name of the son of a virgin. — Christ waned the glorious name of Son of God, and the miraculous name of Son of a virgin too; which is not omitted to draw into doubt the perpetual virginity of the blessed virgin, the mother of Christ, &c.
Very ingenious; but likewise very presumptuous, this arbitrary attribution of St. Paul's silence, and presumable ignorance of the virginity of Mary, to Christ's own determination to have the fact passed over.
N. B. Is 'wane' a misprint for 'wave' or 'waive?' It occurs so often, as to render its being an
erratum
improbable; yet I do not remember to have met elsewhere 'wane' used for 'decline' as a verb active.
Ib.