subtilize

However abstractly they speculate and subtilize, there is always an undigested bone of man-god, god-man, and vicarious atonement in the theological stomach.

From Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions Being a Comparison of the Old and New Testament Myths and Miracles with those of the Heathen Nations of Antiquity Considering also their Origin and Meaning by T. W. Doane

By long brooding over our recollections, we subtilize them into something akin to imaginary stuff, and hardly capable of being distinguished from it.

From The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Almost suffocating under the oppression of repressed feelings, using art only to repeat and rehearse for himself his own internal tragedy, after having wearied emotion, he began to subtilize it.

From Life of Chopin by Martha Elizabeth Duncan Walker Cook

To play with important truths, to disturb the repose of established tenets, to subtilize objections, and elude proof, is too often the sport of youthful vanity, of which maturer experience commonly repents.

From The Works of Samuel Johnson, Volume 06 Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons by Samuel Johnson

Its vividness, its fullness, the sharp bite of its reality go; but a subtilized essence remains.

From The Principles of Aesthetics by Dewitt H. Parker

“Half subtilized to chyle, the liquid food Readiest obeys th’ assimilating powers.”

From The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual by William Kitchiner

Monsieur Pradel, it is imperative that the walls of the Abbaye should appear inscrutable, of great thickness, and yet subtilized by the mists of coming night.

From A Mummer's Tale by Charles E. Roche

Gold was the soil converted into money, the soil mobilized, exchangeable, transportable, divisible, subtilized, spiritualized, as it were.

From The Companions of Jehu by Alexandre Dumas père

The sight of the well-ordered writing-table subtilized for a moment his sense of her desertion.

From The Return of the Prodigal by May Sinclair

By subtilizing, the modern theologian becomes as little intelligible to himself as to others.

From Superstition In All Ages (1732) Common Sense by Anna Knoop

The risk in subtilizing stage character lies just here.

From How to See a Play by Sir Richard Francis Burton

In them there is no subtilizing of human affections, of human fears, or of human faith.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 69, July, 1863 by Various

Beside it relieved me from a multitude of labours and cares, for, as I proceeded, Thomas Aquinas and his subtilizing competitors were thrown by in contempt.

From The Adventures of Hugh Trevor by Thomas Holcroft

But Mr. Arabin went on subtilizing, regarding neither the archdeacon's raillery nor Eleanor's defence.

From Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope