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