pre-existencen.

1601 J. Deacon & J. Walker Dialogicall Disc. Spirits & Diuels 146 This selfesame power of obedience, not onely the Lord himselfe (immediately, and with no preexistence of matter almost) doth exercise by himselfe alone euen from the beginning.

1662 J. Glanvill (title) Lux Orientalis, or an enquiry into the opinion of the Eastern sages, concerning the præexistence of souls.

1723 H. Rowlands Mona Antiqua Restaurata xii. 271 Roman Authors, ascribe to these Druids..Reveal'd Knowledge, as the Præ-existence and Immortality of Human Souls.

1742 Philos. Trans. 1739–40 (Royal Soc.) 41 297 The Pre-existence of the Embryo on the Egg can by no means be demonstrated.

1789 J. Barnard Divinity Jesus Christ 348 The Epistles of St. Paul which contain the doctrine of the divinity and pre-existence of Christ.

1823 C. Lamb Witches in Elia 156 A peep..into the shadow-land of pre-existence.

1839 T. De Quincey Lake Reminiscences in Tait's Edinb. Mag. Jan. 1/2 Oh! sense of mysterious pre-existence, by which, through years in which as yet a stranger to these valleys of Westmoreland, I viewed myself as a phantom-self..already living among them!

1860 E. B. Pusey Minor Prophets 332 It expresses præexistence, an eternal Existence, backwards as well as forwards, the incommunicable attribute of God.

1929 Internat. Jrnl. Ethics 39 367 Of palingenesis, i.e., pre-existence and reincarnation, of his own many past lives,..the professor is absolutely certain.

1958 Evolution 12 294 Pre-existence of this sterile hybrid may not be the necessary condition for the production of the amphidiploid.

2002 N. Drury Dict. Esoteric 255/2 Belief in pre-existence became a Christian heresy following a decree passed at the Fifth Ecumenical Council in A.D. 553.

1883 Chambers's Encycl. VII. 744/2 The followers of this opinion were termed Pre-existencists, to distinguish them from the Traducianists, who held that children received soul as well as body from their parents.