[f. ABSOLUTE + -NESS.] The quality of being absolute (in various senses of the adj.).
† 1. The quality of being complete or finished; completeness, perfection. Obs.
1570. Dee, Math. Præf., 16. The puritie, absolutenes … of Principall Geometrie.
1574. Abp. Whitgift, Def. Answ., Tract i. Wks. 1851, I. 173. The canonical scriptures are of that absoluteness and perfection that nothing may be taken away from them, nothing added to them.
1633. Bp. Hall, Hard T., 137. He findes not any such stability or absoluteness in his very Angels.
1692. Bp. South, 12 Serm. (1697), I. 36. There is nothing that can raise a man to that generous absoluteness of condition.
† 2. Independence. Obs.
1605. Bacon, Adv. Learn., II. 35. He pretended not to make any newe Philosophie, yet did vse the absolutenesse of his owne sense vpon the olde.
1652. P. Sterry, Eng. Deliv. North. Presb., Pref. Giving them a more Excellent Being in this Relative State and Subordination, than they had in their absolutenesse.
3. Unlimited or unrestrained authority; arbitrary rule.
1614. Raleigh, Hist. World, II. 439. Monarches need not to feare any curbing of their absoluteness by mighty subjects, as long as by wisedome they keepe the heartes of the people.
1633. Bp. Hall, Hard T., 513. Alexander of Macedon … shall rule very powerfully and with great freedom and absoluteness.
1728. Morgan, Hist. Algiers, I. vi. 195. His brother and predecessor laid the foundation of that absoluteness.
1854. Kingsley, Alexandria, iv. 158. Their belief in God’s omnipotence and absoluteness dwindled into the most dark, and slavish, and benumbing fatalism.
4. Freedom from conditions; unconditional quality; unreservedness.
1651. Baxter, Inf. Bapt., 299. The excellency of the mercy promised, rather than any absoluteness in the promise.
1674. Hickman, Hist. Quinquart. (ed. 2), 31. God’s Decree, and the absoluteness or conditionality thereof.
1699. Burnet, 39 Articles (1700), xvii. 149. In the main points, the Absoluteness of the Decree, the Extent of Christ’s Death, the Efficacy of Grace, and the Certainty of Perseverance, their opinions are the same.
5. Unconditioned or independent existence.
1864. Kingsley, Rom. & Teut. (1875), iii. 68. Thus denying the absoluteness … the illimitability, by any category of quantity, of that one Eternal.
6. Positiveness, actuality; independent or objective reality.
1678. Cudworth, Intell. Syst., 719. Sense considered alone by itself doth not reach to the Absoluteness either of the Natures, or of the Existence of things without us, it being as such, nothing but Seeming, Appearance, and Phancy.
1856. R. A. Vaughan, Ho. w. Myst., I. V. ii. 169. To gaze on the Divine Nature in its absoluteness and abstraction, apart from the manifestation of it to our intellect, our heart, and our imagination.
¶ Catachr. for Obsoleteness. (See ABSOLENT.)
1612. Brerewood, Ess. Lang. & Rel., vi. 52. The Verses of the Salii … could hardly be understood … in the latter time of the Commonwealth, for the absoluteness of the Speech.
