non-believern.

1649 J. Drew Serious Addresse 30 We must distinguish Non-believers from unbelievers, such as are not up to a capassity of professing faith... Such are all Infants.

1655 S. Rutherford Covenant of Life Opened i. xix. 176 Pure free-will..separateth the beleever from the non-beleever.

1795 F. Plowden Church & State iii. iii. 412 His friend's theory was neither calculated to satisfy the believer or the non-believer in Christianity [etc.].

1846 Q. Rev. June 427 A variety of denominations—believers and non-believers—lovers of art and followers of fashion, appear to be indiscriminately busy in promoting this undertaking [sc. building Cologne cathedral].

1870 C. Dickens Edwin Drood iv. 21 Mr Sapsea has many admirers; indeed, the proposition is carried by a large majority, even including non-believers in his wisdom.

1911 Catholic Encycl. XI. 315/1 Thus the principal difficulties of non-believers against the transmission of sin are answered. ‘Free will is essentially incommunicable.’ Physically, yes; morally, no.

1957 P. Worsley Trumpet shall Sound x. 218 As the cult snowballed..non-believers were gaoled.

1987 J. Gleick Chaos i. 31 ‘Of course, we completely missed the point’, Malkus said a generation later—years after he had built a real Lorenzian waterwheel in his basement laboratory to show nonbelievers.

2000 Amer. Scholar Autumn 68 Before I took sick, I approached God as Jewish boys were expected to approach divinity—..with all those obligations thrust upon me by having been born into what even my nonbeliever radical uncle called ‘the tribe’.