Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home 		English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Latitudinarian   Listen
noun
Latitudinarian  n.  
1.
One who is moderate in his notions, or not restrained by precise settled limits in opinion; one who indulges freedom in thinking.
2.
(Eng. Eccl. Hist.) A member of the Church of England, in the time of Charles II., who adopted more liberal notions in respect to the authority, government, and doctrines of the church than generally prevailed. "They were called "men of latitude;" and upon this, men of narrow thoughts fastened upon them the name of latitudinarians."
3.
(Theol.) One who departs in opinion from the strict principles of orthodoxy.


adjective
Latitudinarian  adj.  
1.
Not restrained; not confined by precise limits.
2.
Indifferent to a strict application of any standard of belief or opinion; hence, deviating more or less widely from such standard; lax in doctrine; as, latitudinarian divines; latitudinarian theology. "Latitudinarian sentiments upon religious subjects."
3.
Lax in moral or religious principles.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words


Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar




"Latitudinarian" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the Buddhists. Brahmanism in its constitution and spirit is essentially exclusive and fanatical, jealous of all conflicting faiths, and strongly disposed to persecution. Buddhism, on the other hand, in the strength of its self-righteousness, extends a latitudinarian liberality to every other belief, and exhibits a Laodicean indifference towards its own. Whilst Brahmanism is a science confided only to an initiated priesthood; and the Vedas and the Shastras in which its precepts are embodied are kept with jealousy from the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... its friends, his adversaries. He professed himself a great admirer of its literature, and, in the heat of controversy, he often found himself a defender of its doctrines when he had occasion to expose the fallacy of latitudinarian interpretations. For liberal Christianity he had nothing but contempt, and refuted it with a scorn which spared none of the worldly tendencies of the church in Equity. The idea that souls were to be saved by church sociables filled him with inappeasable rancor; and he maintained the superiority ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... sound sectarian teaching in the works of the poet, and they say that in the interests of theology they must drive a nail in. They drive it: they know how to drive nails, some of the theologians. Good sound crushing, rending, comfortable nails of doctrine—none of your airy latitudinarian tin-tacks. Then come the critics: they have been brought up to it. They have all manner of nails—nails with broad heads, and narrow heads, and brass heads, and no heads, but all with points. If a critic ever ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... very singular; and in this respect she was so different from the rest of the world, that it would be difficult to make her understood. Her tolerance of wrong-doing would have seemed to many quite latitudinarian, and impressed them as if she had lost all just horror of what was morally wrong in transgression; but it seemed her fixed habit to see faults only as diseases and immaturities, and to expect them to ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... opinion existed also in the mother-country, where the rising sect of "freethinkers" began to deny and deride all diabolical agencies. Nor was this view confined to professed freethinkers. The latitudinarian party in the Church, a rapidly growing body, leaned perceptibly the same way. The "serious ministers," on the other hand, led by Richard Baxter, their acknowledged head, defended with zeal the reality of witchcraft and the personality and agency of the devil, to deny which they denounced ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson


More quotes...


Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com