“Although ’twas our and their opinion
    Each other’s church was but a Rimmon.”—­Hudibras.

OBS. 3.—­Mine and thine were formerly preferred to my and thy, before all words beginning with a vowel sound; or rather, mine and thine were the original forms,[207] and my and thy were first substituted for them before consonants, and afterwards before vowels:  as, “But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance.”—­Psalms, lv, 13. “Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God.”—­Acts, x, 4.  When the Bible was translated, either form appears to have been used before the letter h; as, “Hath not my hand made all these things?”—­Acts, vii, 50.  “By stretching forth thine hand to heal.”—­Acts, iv, 30.  According to present practice, my and thy are in general to be preferred before all nouns, without regard to the sounds of letters.  The use of the other forms, in the manner here noticed, has now become obsolete; or, at least, antiquated, and peculiar to the poets.  We occasionally meet with it in modern verse, though not very frequently, and only where the melody of the line seems to require it:  as,

   “Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow.”—­Byron.

    “Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes.”—­Johnson.

    “Mine eyes beheld the messenger divine.”—­Lusiad.

    “Thine ardent symphony sublime and high.”—­Sir W. Scott.

OBS. 4.—­The possessives mine, thine, hers, ours, yours, theirs, usually denote possession, or the relation of property, with an ellipsis of the name of the thing possessed; as, “My sword and yours are kin.”—­Shakspeare.  Here yours means your sword.  “You may imagine what kind of faith theirs was.”—­Bacon.  Here theirs means their faith.  “He ran headlong into his own ruin whilst he endeavoured to precipitate ours.”—­Bolingbroke.  Here ours means our ruin.  “Every one that heareth these saying of mine.”—­Matt., vii, 26.  Here mine means my sayings.  “Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints of his.”—­Psalms, xxx, 4.  Here his means his saints.  The noun which governs the possessive, is here understood after it, being inferred from that which precedes, as it is in all the foregoing instances.  “And the man of thine, whom I shall not cut off from mine altar, shall be to consume thine eyes, and to grieve thine heart.”—­1 Samuel, ii, 33.  Here thine, in the first phrase, means thy men; but, in the subsequent parts of the sentence, both mine and thine mean neither more nor less than thy and my,