DECAPITATE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Decapitate

... every good sermon and its text is just as vital as the connection between a peach-tree and its root. Sometimes an indolent minister tries to palm off an old sermon for a pretended new one by changing the text, but this shallow device ought to expose itself as if he should decapitate a dog and undertake to clap on the head of some other animal. Intelligent audiences see through such tricks and despise them. "Be sure your sin will find you out." When a passage from the Holy Scripture ...

— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler