a. and sb. [f. ALTITUDE, after latitude, latitudinarian: see -ARIAN.] A. adj. Pertaining to, or reaching to, the heights (of fancy, doctrine, etc.). B. sb. One who is given to lofty thoughts or plans.
1820. T. Birch, Life of Tillotson, in Wks. I. p. cclxxvii. For such hath been the height of some of our altitudinarian divines, as that they have not stuck to challenge them as being no churches, for want of episcopal government.
1850. T. T. Lynch, Theoph. Trin., xii. 242. The wise latitudinarian is also an altitudinarian: his thought spreads broadly, but it is also high-rising, and strikes deep.
1871. Hetty Bowman, Th. Chr. Life (1872), 13. Some one says [sermons are], ‘altitudinarian, latitudinarian, or platitudinarian.’
