occasionalistn.adj.

1705 Char. of Smoker in Harl. Misc. (1808) XI. 30 He..makes an interest against the Occasional bill, because he is a sort of an occasionalist himself.

1737 ‘C. Dodd’ Church Hist. Eng. II. i. 346/1 Some may imagine that either [Cranmer] was a notorious occasionalist, or, as yet, a stranger to the pretended superstition..of the mass.

1739 ‘C. Dodd’ Church Hist. Eng. II. v. ii. v. 402/2 John Hayward: who, being himself a kind of an occasionalist, approved of the design [sc. the resolution to quit the party].

1879 Dublin Rev. Jan. 76 There were also many who were always Catholics at heart, though they were what Dodd calls ‘occasionalists’, ie., occasional conformers in the time of Edward.

1776 E. Burke Let. to J. Bourke in Corr. (1844) II. 112 Our love to the occasionalist, but not server of occasions.

1838 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. 44 234 From Aristotle, down through his scholastic followers, past the occasionalists and pre-established harmonists.

1879 T. H. Huxley Hume ix. 166 The successors of Descartes either found themselves obliged, with the Occasionalists, to call in the aid of the Deity, or [etc.].

1916 Philos. Rev. 25 700 In his denial of all power to the human will, even to create its own desires, Malebranche was more sweeping than many of the other Occasionalists.

1971 Catholic Dict. Theol. III. 346/2 Bradwardine might be called an Occasionalist, since he reduced the activity of creatures to a mere nothing.

1994 S. Blackburn Oxf. Dict. Philos. 229/1 Like Islamic occasionalists such as Al-Ghazali, Malebranche reserves causal power to God.

1891 Athenæum 10 Jan. 55/2 It contains..much information about the great Occasionalist thinker [sc. Geulincx].

1926 Jrnl. Philos. 23 175 Novelty in this occasionalist logic is confused with surprise.