greenbaggins
Puritan Board Doctor
I have come across this extraordinarily obscure phrase in Joseph Caryl's Job commentary (volume 4, p. 186), and I cannot make heads or tails of this phrase. In context, it reads like this (it is commentary on Job 12:5-6): "Thou tellest me that a godly man shall be brighter than the sun at noon, that his brightness shall increase like the morning sun, more and more unto the perfect day; whereas, alas, I see all the light which many a godly man hath, no bigger than a candle or a lamp, and that not like the light of a great candle neither, or of a goodly beautiful lamp, but like the light of some poor candle of the sixteens, or of the meanest lamp."
I have already looked up "sixteens" and "candle" in the OED, and no help there. There doesn't appear to be an online dictionary of archaic phrases, but if anyone can help me out here, I would appreciate it. The basic meaning is clear enough in meaning some kind of light that is not very bright. It has the feel of a period idiomatic expression. It seems unlikely to me to refer to a kind of service of a coming of age at sixteen, as some websites have propounded.
I have already looked up "sixteens" and "candle" in the OED, and no help there. There doesn't appear to be an online dictionary of archaic phrases, but if anyone can help me out here, I would appreciate it. The basic meaning is clear enough in meaning some kind of light that is not very bright. It has the feel of a period idiomatic expression. It seems unlikely to me to refer to a kind of service of a coming of age at sixteen, as some websites have propounded.