[f. prec. + -MENT.]
1. An act of condescension, grace or favor; a boon, benefit or blessing.
1628. Gaule, Pract. The. (1629), 135. It was a woundrous vouchsafement, that he who inioyed the highth of Diuinitie, should descend to the bottome of Humanitie.
1652. J. Pawson, Vind. Free Grace, 22. Christ hath not purchased any such general vouchsafement to all the children of men.
1674. Boyle, Excell. Theol., I. i. 59. I am prone to think the early discoveries of such great and important things, to be in God’s account no mean vouchsafements.
1726. Wodrow, Corr. (1843), III. 277. To make a judgment how far it will be proper to publish some extraordinary vouchsafements towards them.
1756. Amory, Buncle (1770), I. 187. A merciful vouchsafement from God to mankind.
c. 1800. R. Cumberland, John de Lancaster (1809), III. 231. That indeed … will be a happiness never to be exceeded, a vouchsafement never to be forgotten.
1822. E. Irving, Lett., in Oliphant, Life (1862), I. vi. 135. But these things … delight me not, save as vouchsafements of my Maker’s bounty.
1874. Pusey, Lent. Serm., 184. But by what giant progress in graces, by what undeviating correspondence to Divine vouchsafements in time, must that soul have been formed.
2. The action of conferring or granting some boon, favor, advantage, etc.
1666. Glanvill, Serm., Luke xiii. 24, in Discourses, etc. (1681), 59. [He] believes … that God is in him of a Truth, in a special way of Manifestation and Vouchsafement.
1668. Howe, Bless. Righteous (1825), 22. Reducing them to a … dispair of relief, otherwise than by his merciful hand and vouchsafement.
1683. J. Corbet, Free Actions, III. xxxiii. 52. God doth ascertain Conversion, by the vouchsafement of such Grace, as doth infallibly produce it.
1721. R. Keith, trans. T. à Kempis, Solil. Soul, xiii. 203. If thou standest astonished at the Vouchsafement of this Union.
1805. Eugenia de Acton, Nuns of Desert, I. 229. Did he not duly administer pardon, and peace, and indulgence, to every one who applied properly to him, for such portions of Divine Vouchsafement?
1847. R. W. Hamilton, Rewards & Punishm., 316. The sovereign vouchsafement of mercy to some.
