a. [f. the L. phrase ultrā fidem ‘beyond faith.’] Going beyond mere faith; blindly credulous. Also Ultrafidianism.
1825. Coleridge, Aids Refl., viii. Sir Thomas Brown … could answer all the objections of the Devil and Reason ‘with the old resolution he had learnt of Tertullian: Certum est quia impossibile est!’… Now this I call Ultra-fidianism.
a. 1849. H. Coleridge, Ess. (1851), II. 96. The great moralist, who balanced an ultrafidian credulity in the supernatural with an extraordinary degree of scepticism in things natural and human.
1865. Reader, 14 Jan., 43/2. It must be, however, a strangely incurious and ultrafidian mind that can consent to rest there … simply at another’s bidding.
