[f. SPIRITUALIZE v.]
1. One who gives a spiritual sense to a Scriptural statement, etc.; one who interprets spiritually.
1698. trans. Fénelon’s Maxims of Saints, 202. Altho’ the said Book doth … make an enumeration of false spirituallizers.
a. 1779. Warburton, Div. Legat., IX. ii. Wks. 1788, III. 655. The Socinians, who boast to have interpreted Scripture on the severest and justest Laws of Logic and Criticism, have, in this instance,… deviated more from these Laws than the most licentious of the Allegorists, or the wildest of the Spiritualizers.
1828. E. Irving, Last Days, 362. O ye niggard spiritualizers of God’s universal promise!
1842. Faber, Prov. Lett. (1844), II. 35. A thorough-going spiritualiser will tell you the covert meaning of every dish and spoon in Solomon’s temple.
2. A spiritualizing agency or quality.
1822. Whewell, in Mrs. S. Douglas, Life (1881), 73. It … is something of the same kind of consoler and spiritualiser in small matters that religion is in great ones.
1867. H. Bushnell, Mor. Uses Dark Th., 21. Sleep is a spiritualizer.
