Mortify

Mortify - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

MOR'TIFY, v.t. [L. mors, death, and facio, to make.]

1. To destroy the organic texture and vital functions of some part of a living animal; to change to sphacelus or gangrene. Extreme inflammation speedily mortifies flesh.

2. To subdue or bring into subjection, as the bodily appetites by abstinence or rigorous severities.

We mortify ourselves with fish.

With fasting mortified, worn out with tears.

3. To subdue; to abase; to humble; to reduce; to restrain; as inordinate passions.

Mortify thy learned lust.

Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth. Col 3.

4. To humble; to depress; to affect with slight vexation.

How often is the ambitious man mortified with the very praises he receives, if they do not rise so high as he thinks they ought.

He is controlled by a nod, mortified by a frown, and transported with a smile.

5. To destroy active powers or essential qualities.

He mortified pearls in vinegar--

Quicksilver--mortified with turpentine.

[I believe this application is not now in use.]

MOR'TIFY, v.i. To lose vital heat and action and suffer the dissolution of organic texture, as flesh; to corrupt or gangrene.

1. To be subdued.

2. To practice severities and penance from religious motives.

This makes him give alms of all that he hath, watch, fast and mortify.

mor'-ti-fi (Ro 8:13 the King James Version and the English Revised Version, thanatoo, the English Revised Version margin "make to die," and Col 3:5, nekroo, the English Revised Version margin "make dead"): This sense of mortify is obsolete in modern English, and the American Standard Revised Version in both places substitutes "put to death," with great advantage. The context in both passages goes to the heart of Paul's doctrine of the union of the believer with Christ. This union has given the soul a new life, flowing (through the Spirit) from Christ in the heavenly world, so that the remnants of the old corrupt life-principle are now dangerous excrescences. Hence, they are to be destroyed, just as a surgeon removes the remnants of a diseased condition after the reestablishment of healthy circulation. The interpreter must guard against weakening Paul's language into some such phrase as "subdue all that is inconsistent with the highest ideals," for Paul views the union with Christ as an intensely real, quasi-physical relation.

Burton Scott Easton