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Free-thinker. World English Historical Dictionary

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Free-thinker. World English Historical Dictionary Dictionary Biographies Literary Criticism Welcome Terms of Service ⧏ Previous Next ⧐ Contents Slice Contents Key Bibliographic Record Murray’s New English Dictionary. 1901, rev. 2022. Free-thinker One who refuses to submit his reason to the control of authority in matters of religious belief; a designation claimed esp. by the deistic and other rejectors of Christianity at the beginning of the 18th c.

1   The sect mentioned in the first quot. seems to be identical with the ‘free seekers’ (quot. 1693 s.v. FREE D. 1 c).

2 1692[?].  S. Smith (title), The Religious Impostor … dedicated to Doctor S—lm—n, and the rest of the new Religious Fraternity of Free-Thinkers, near Leather-Sellers-Hall … Printed … in the first year of Grace and Free Thinking.

3 1708.  Swift, Sentim. Ch. of Eng. Man, Wks. (1755), II. I. 56. The atheists, libertines, despisers of religion and revelation in general, that is to say, all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.

4 1836.  Hor. Smith, The Tin Trumpet (1876), 170. Freethinker.—This word, by a strange abuse of terms, has come to be synonymous with a libertine and a contemner of religion, whereas the best security, both for morality and piety, is a perfect freedom of thought.

5 1874.  Morley, Compromise (1886), 151. The modern freethinker does not attack it [Christianity]; he explains it. And what is more, he explains it by referring its growth to the better, and not to the worse part of human nature.

6   transf.  1848.  Thackeray, Van. Fair, xlv. He (who had been formerly inclined to be a sad freethinker on these points) entered into poaching and game preserving with ardour.

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