[-ING2.]
† 1. Existing substantially, substantial. Obs.
1674. Owen, Disc. Holy Spirit, I. iii. 54. He [sc. the Holy Ghost] was represented by a subsisting Substance.
† 2. Abiding, lasting. Obs.
1613. Wither, Abuses Stript, I. Concl., Juvenilia (1633), 112. Shee hath no power to see The better things that more subsisting bee.
1678. J. Brown, Life of Faith (1824), I. vii. 138. Not only would the faith of this help to a subsisting life but … to a life of joy.
3. Existing at a specified or implied time.
1765. Blackstone, Comm., I. viii. 276. Where there is a subsisting lease, of which there are twenty years still to come.
1794. Paley, Evid., III. ii. (1800), II. 302. It appears in the Christian records … as being the subsisting opinion of the age and country in which his ministry was exercised.
1818. Cruise, Digest (ed. 2), II. 325. This not being a remainder created by that deed, but a conveyance of the then subsisting reversion or remainder expectant on the death of M.
1858. Gladstone, Homer, III. 9. Independently of sovereignties purely local … we find a subsisting Pelopid empire.
1859. Mill, Liberty, i. (1865), 5. The still subsisting habit of looking on the government as representing an opposite interest to the public.
Hence † Subsistingly adv., enduringly.
a. 1641. Mountagu, Acts & Mon. (1642), 72. But that Fabrick, whereon subsistingly doth it rely?
