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the sea.

Mr. Gay died of a mortification of the bowels; it was the most precipitate case I ever knew, having cut him off in three days. Arbuthnot.

As the escar separated, I rubbed the superexcrescence with the vitriol stone, or sprinkled it with precipitate. Wiseman.

Should he return, that troop so blithe and bold, Precipitant in fear, would wing their flight, And curse their cumbrous pride's unwieldy weight. Pope. Not so bold Arnall; with a weight of skull Furious he sinks, precipitately dull.

Id. Dunciad. Hurried on by the precipitancy of youth, I took this opportunity to send a letter to the secretary.

Swift.

A rashness and precipitance of judgment, and hastiness to believe something on one side or the other, plunges us into many errors. Watts's Logick.

We are complicated machines; and though we have one main spring, that gives motion to the whole, we have an infinity of little wheels, which, in their turns, retard, precipitate, and sometimes stop, the motion. Chesterfield.

PRECIPITATION, in chemistry, the process of decomposition by which any body separates from others in a solution and falls to the bottom: thus, if to an acid and an oxide a third body as an alkali be added, then the alkali having a greater affinity to the acid than the metallic oxide has, combines with it, and the oxide in consequence precipitates, or appears in a separate state at the bottom. The substance thus sinking is called the precipitate, and that, by the addition of which this effect is produced is called the precipitant. Sir Humphry Davy found that whenever one metal precipitates another from its acid solution, the body that falls down is usually free both from acid and oxygen; and that the whole of the oxygen and the acid, is transferred

from one metal to the other.

PRECISE', adj. Fr. precis; Lat. præPRECISELY, adv. cisus. Exact; strict; PRECISE NESS, n. s. nice; having definite liPRECISIAN, mits; formal precisely PRECISION, and preciseness PRECISIVE, adj. spond with this, and precision is synonymous with the latter: a precisian is one who limits or restrains with exactness or rigor precisive, exactly limited.

corre

In his track my wary feet have stept, His undeclined ways precisely kept. Sandys. Means more durable to preserve the laws of God

from oblivion and corruption grew in use, not with. out precise direction from God himself. Hooker,

Doth it follow that all things in the church, from the greatest to the least, are unholy, which the Lord hath not himself precisely instituted? Id.

You'll not bear a letter for me; you stand upon your honour; why, thou unconfinable baseness, it is as much as I can do to keep the term of mine honour precise. Shakspeare. He knows,

He cannot so precisely weed this land
As his misdoubts present occasion,

His foes are so enrooted with his friends. Id. Though love use reason for his precisian, he admits him not for his counsellor. Id.

The state hath given you licence to stay on land six weeks, and let it not trouble you if your occasions ask farther time; for the law in this point is not precise.

Bacon.

I will distinguish the cases; though give me leave, in the handling of them, not to sever them with too much preciseness.

Id. These men, for all the world, like our precisians be, Who for some cross or saint they in the window see Will pluck down all the church. Drayton.

Where more of these orders than one shall be set in several stories, there must be an exquisite care to place the columns precisely one over another.

Wotton's Architecture. In human actions there are no degrees and precise natural limits described, but a latitude is indulged. Taylor.

Let us descend from this top

Of speculation; for the hour precise Exacts our parting. Milton's Paradise Lost. The rule, to find the age of the moon, cannot shew precisely an exact account of the moon, because of the inequality of the motions of the sun and of the

moon.

Holder.

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Measuring the diameter of the fifth dark circle, I found it the fifth part of an inch precisely.

Newton's Opticks. The reasonings must be precise, though the practice may admit of great latitude. Arbuthnot.

I was unable to treat this part more in detail, without sacrificing perspicuity to ornament, without wandering from the precision or breaking the chain of reasoning. Pope.

collective idea is this, that a compound idea unites The precise difference between a compound and things of a different kind, but a collective, things of

the same kind.

Watts.

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And every body but his mother deemed Him almost man; but she flew in a rage And bit her lips (for else she might have screamed) If any said so, for to be precocious

Was in her eyes a thing the most atrocious. Byron. PRECONCEIT', n. s. Pre and conceit. An opinion previously formed.

A thing in reason impossible, which notwithstand ing through their misfashioned preconceit appeared

unto them no less certain than if nature had written it in the very foreheads of all the creatures.

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The king called his parliament, where he exaggerated the malice and the cruel predatory war made by Scotland.

Bacon.

As those are endowed with poison, because they are predaceous: so these need it not, because their food is near at hand, and may be obtained without contest. Derham.

Sarmat a, laid by predal rapine low, Mourned the hard yoke, and sought relief in vain. Boyse. PREDECEASED, adj. Pre and deceased. Dead before.

Will you mock at an ancient tradition, begun upon an honourable respect, and worn as a memorable trophy of predeceased valour? Shakspeare. PREDECESSOR, n. s. Fr. predecesseur ; Lat. pra and decedo. One that was in any state or place before another; an ancestor.

In these pastoral pastimes a great many days were spent to follow their flying predecessors.

Sidney.

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If I seem partial to my predecessor in the laurel, the friends of antiquity are not few. Dryden.

The present pope, who is well acquainted with the secret history, and the weakness of his predecessor, seems resolved to bring the project to its perfection. Addison.

The more beauteous Chloe sat to thee,
Good Howard, emulous of Apelles' art;
But happy thou from Cupid's arrow free,
And flames that pierced thy predecessor's heart.

PREDESTINATE, v. a. & v. n.
PREDESTINA RIAN, n. s.
PREDESTINATION,
PREDESTINATOR,
PREDESTINE, v. a.

Prior.

Fr. predestiner;

Latin pre

and destino. To ap

point beforehand: in ludicrous language, to hold predestination: predestinarian, one who holds that doctrine; see below. Predestinator is used out of all analogy by Cowley as synonymous with predestinarian: to predestine is to decree beforehand.

Whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son. Romans. Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself. Ephesians i. 5. Some gentleman or other shall 'scape a predestinate scratcht face. Shakspeare.

Predestination we can difference no otherwise from providence and prescience, than this, that prescience only foreseeth, providence foreseeth and careth for, and hath respect to all creatures, and predestination is only of men; and yet not of all to men belonging, but of their salvation properly in the common use of divines; or perdition, as some have used it. Raleigh's History of the World

Why does the predestinarian so adventurously climb Into heaven, to ransack the celestial archives, read God's hidden decrees, when with less labour he may secure an authentick transcript within himself? Decay of Piety.

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Me, mine example let the Stoicks use, Their sad and cruel doctrine to maintain; Let all predestinators me produce,

Who struggle with eternal fate in vain. Cowley. Nor can they justly accuse

Their maker, or their making, or their fate;
As if predestination overruled

Their will, disposed by absolute decree,
Or high fore-knowledge.

Milton's Paradise Lost.

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Ye careful angels, whom eternal fate Ordains on earth and human acts to wait, Who turn with secret power this restless ball, And bid predestined empires rise and fall. Prior. PREDESTINATION is, according to the Calvinistic writers, the decree of God, whereby he hath from all eternity unchangeably appointed whatsoever comes to pass; and hath more especially fore-ordained certain individuals of the buman race to everlasting happiness, and hath passed by the rest, or fore-ordained them to everfasting misery. The former of these are called the elect, and the latter the reprobate. This doctrine is the subject of one of the most perplexing controversies that have occurred among mankind. But it is not peculiar to the Christian faith. It has always been in some degree a popular opinion, and has been believed by many speculative men. The ancient Stoics, Zeno and Chrysippus, whom the Jewish Essenes seem to have followed, asserted the existence of a Deity that, acting wisely, but necessarily, contrived the general system of the world; from which, by a series of causes, whatever is now done in it unavoidably results. This series or concatenation of causes, they held to be necessary in every part; and that God himself is so much the servant of necessity, and of his own decrees, that he could not have made the smallest object in the world otherwise than it now is, much less is he able to alter any thing. Seneca gives a similar account of the doctrine of fate. See NECESSITY. The Stoical fate differs, however, from the Christian predestination in several points. They regard the divine nature and will as a necessary part of a chain of causes; whereas all Christians consider the Deity as the Lord and Ruler of the universe, omnipotent and free, appointing all things according to his pleasure. Being doubtful of the immortality of the soul, the Stoics could have no idea of the doctrine of election and reprobation; nor did they ever doubt their own freedom of will, or power of doing good as well as evil, as the Christian predestinarians have done. Mahomet introduced into his Koran the doctrine of an absolute predestination in the strongest terms. In the Christian Church the controversy concerning predestination first made its appearance about the beginning of the fifth century, in consequence of the heretical opinions advanced by Pelagius and Calestius. See PELAGIANS. These were zealously

opposed by the celebrated St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo, who first asserted the leading tenets of the Predestinarians. The dispute was carried on with great zeal. Zosimus, bishop of Rome, decided at first in favor of Pelagius, but afterwards altered his opinion. The council of Ephesus approved of St. Augustine's doctrine, and condemned that of his opponents. These opinions soon after assumed various modifications. A party called predestinarians carried Augustine's doctrine farther than he had done, and said that God had decreed the sins as well as punishment of the wicked. Another party moderated Pelagius's doctrine, and were called SEMI-PELAGIANS. (See that article.) But the doctrine of St. Augustine, who wrote several treatises on the subject, became general. He was the oracle of the school-men. They only disputed about the true sense of his writings.

The whole of the earliest reformers maintained these opinions of Augustine. Under Luther they only assumed a more regular and systematic form than they had before exhibited. But, as the Lutherans afterwards abandoned them, they are now known by the name of Calvinistic doctrines, from John Calvin of Geneva. The opponents of the doctrine of predestination among the Protestants usually receive the appellation of Arminians or Remonstrants. They derive the first of these appellations from James Arminius, professor of theology at Leyden, and the second from the Arminians who remonstrated against the synod of Dort. (See ARMINIUS.) A counter remonstrance was presented, containing the opinions of the Calvinists, which was approved of by the synod. The substance of it was afterwards adopted in nearly the same expressions into the Confession of Faith, compiled by the assembly of divines at Westminster in 1643; which every clergyman of the church of Scotland subscribes previous to his admission. It runs thus:- God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions; yet hath he not decreed any thing because he foresaw it as future, or that which would come to pass upon such conditions. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others are fore-ordained to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predestinated and fore-ordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to his eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret council and good pleasure of his will, hath chosen, in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of his mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith, good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the

creature, as conditions or causes moving him thereunto; and all to the praise of his glorious grace. As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath he, by the eternal and most free purpose of his will, fore-ordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore, they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ, by his Spirit working in due season; are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept, by his power through faith unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extended or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.'

There are two kinds of modern Calvinists or Predestinarians, viz. the Supralapsarians, who maintain that God did originally and expressly decree the fall of Adam, as a foundation for the display of his justice and mercy; while those who maintain that God only permitted the fall of Adam are called Sublapsarians; their system of decrees concerning election and reprobation being, as it were, subsequent to that event. But, as Dr. Priestley justly remarks, if we admit the divine prescience, there is not, in fact, any difference between the two schemes; and, accordingly, that distinction is now seldom mentioned. Nor was the church of Rome less agitated by the contest about predestination than the first Protestants were. The council of Trent was much perplexed how to settle the matter without giving offence to the Dominicans, who were much attached to the doctrine of Augustine, and possessed great influence in the council. After much dispute, the great object came to be, how to contrive such a decree as might give offence to nobody, and decide nothing. Upon the whole, however, they seem to have favored the Semipelagian scheme. Among other things, it was determined that good works are of themselves meritorious to eternal life; but it is added, by way of softening, that it is through the goodness of God that he makes his own gifts to be merits in us, Catarin revived at that council an opinion of some of the schoolmen, that God chose a small number of persons, such as the blessed virgin, the apostles, &c., whom he was determined to save without any foresight of their good works; and that he also wills that all the rest should be saved, providing for them all necessary means, but they are at liberty to use them or not. This is called in England the Baxterian scheme. The Jesuits at first followed the opinion of Augustine; but afterwards forsook it. Molina, one of their order, was the author of what is called the middle scheme, or the doctrine of a grace sufficient for all men, but subject to the freedom of the human will. Jansenius, a doctor of Louvain, opposed the Jesuits with great vigor, and supported the doctrine of Augustine. (See JANSENISTS.) But the Jesuits had sufficient interest at Rome to procure the

opinions of Jansenius to be condemned. These disputes have never been fully settled, and stili divide even the Roman Catholic church. Some of the ablest supporters of Predestination have appeared among the Jansenists, and particularly among the gentlemen of Port-Royal. With regard to Great Britain, the earliest English reformers were in general Sublapsarians, although some of them were Supralapsarians. But the rigid Predestinarians have been gradually declining in number in that church, although they still subscribe the thirty-nine articles. The celebrated Scottish Reformer, John Knox, having been educated at Geneva, established in his own country the doctrine of predestination in its strictest form and it has probably been adhered to more strictly in Scotland than in any part of Europe. Of late years, however, the dispute concerning predestination has assumed a form considerably different from that which it formerly possessed. Instead of being considered as a point to be determined almost entirely by the Sacred Scriptures, it has, in the hands of a number of able writers, in a great measure resolved itself into a question of natural religion, under the head of the philosophical liberty or necessity of the will. (See METAPHYSICS and NECESSITY.) Readers who wish for farther information on this subject may consult the writings of lord Kames, Jonathan Edwards, and Dr. Priestley, one of the most celebrated Necessitarians of his age. To give even a sketch of the arguments on both sides would far exceed our bounds. Milton, an eminent philosopher and divine, as well as the first of poets, when he wished to exhibit the fallen angels themselves as perplexed by questions above their comprehension, set them to dispute about predestination:

They reasoned high, of knowledge, will, and fate, Fixed fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute; And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost.

PREDETERMINE, v. a. Pre and determine. To doom or confine by previous decree.

We see in brutes certain sensible instincts antecedent to their imaginative faculty, whereby they are predetermined to the convenience of the sensible life.

Hale.

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The offender's life lies in the mercy

f the duke only, 'gainst all other voice; In which predicament I say thou stand'st. Shakspeare. I shew the line and the predicament, Wherein you range under this subtile king. Id. God then is light in himself; so in relation to us: and this predication of light serves to confirm our conformity to God in his behalf. Bp. Hall.

If there were nothing but bodies to be ranked by them in the predicament of place, then that description would be allowed by them as sufficient.

Digby on Bodies.

It were a presumption to think that any thing in any created nature can bear any perfect resemblance of the incomprehensive perfection of the divine nature, very being itself not predicating univocally touching him and any created being.

Hale.

All propositions, wherein a part of the complex idea, which any term stands for, is predicated of that term, are only verbal; v. g. to say that gold is a metal. Locke. Let us reason from them as well as we can; they are only about identical predications and influence.

Id.

These they call the five predicables; because every thing that is affirmed concerning any being, must be the genus, species, difference, some property, or accident. Watts.

The predicate is that which is affirmed or denied of the subject. Id. Logick.

PREDICT', v. a.

Fr. predire; Lat. præPREDICTION, n.s. dictus. "To foretell; to

:

PREDICTOR. declaration or revelation of something future; prophecy predictor is a foreteller.

These predictions

Are to the world in general, as to Cæsar.

Shakspeare. The predictions of cold and long winters, hot and dry summers, are good to be known. Bacon.

How soon hath thy prediction, seer blest! Measured this transient world the race of time, Till time stand fixed. Milton's Paradise Lost. In Christ they all meet with an invincible evidence, as if they were not predictions, but after-relations; and the penmen of them not prophets but evangelists. South.

He is always inveighing against such unequal distributions; nor does he ever cease to predict publick ruins, till his private are repaired.

Government of the Tongue.
He, who prophesyed the best,
Approves the judgment to the rest;
He'd rather choose that I should die,
Than his prediction prove a lie.
Swift's Miscellanies.

Whether he has not been the cause of this poor man's death, as well as the predictor, may be disputed. Swift. PREDIGESTION, n. s. Pre and digestion. Digestion too soon performed. Predigestion, or hasty digestion, fills the body full of crudities and seeds of diseases.

Bacon's Essays. PREDISPOSE', v. a. Pre and dispose. To adapt previously to any certain purpose.

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Unless nature be predisposed to friendship by its own propensity, no arts of obligation shall be able to abate the secret hatred of same persons towards others. South. External accidents are often the occasional cause of the king's evil; but they suppose a predisposition of the body. Wiseman.

PREDOM'INATE, v. n.
PREDOM'INANCE, n. s.
PREDOMINANT, adj.

Fr. predominer; Lat. præ and doSminor. To pre

vail; be ascendant; be supreme: predominance is prevalence; superiority; ascendancy: predominant, prevalent; ascendant.

Miserable were the condition of that church, the deliberations, wherein such an humour as this were weighty affairs whereof should be ordered by those. predominant.

Hooker.

We make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars, as we if were knaves, thieves, and treacherous by spherical predominance. Shakspeare.

Foul subordination is predominant,

And equity exiled your highness' land. Id. made against him, and were predominant in the Those helps were overweighed by things that king's mind.

Bacon.

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The several rays in white light do retain their colorific qualities, by which those of any sort, whenever they become more copious than the rest, do, by their excess and predominance, cause their proper colour to appear. Newton.

The rays, reflected least obliquely, may predominate over the rest, so much as to cause a heap of such particles to appear very intensely of their colour. Id. Opticks.

I could shew you several pieces, where the beauties of this kind are so predominant, that you could never be able to read or understand them. Swift.

Where judgment is at a loss to determine the choice of a lady who has several lovers, fancy may the more allowably predominate.

Clarissa.

cause withdrew him from public cares, principles diIf ever he fell into a fit of the gout, or if any other rectly contrary were sure to predominate.

· Burke. Character of Lord Chatham. It is the prevalence or predominance of any particular passion which gives the turn or tincture to a

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