enlightenern.

1582 T. Bentley et al. Monument of Matrones iii. 225 O mine Inlightener, it is thou that hast taught and instructed me.

1667 J. Milton Paradise Lost xii. 271 O sent from Heav'n, Enlightner of my darkness. View more context for this quotation

1693 J. Bancroft Henry II ii. ii. 16 How does my sweet Lady, Nature's Pride, Pleasure of all our Senses, the Day's Comfort, the Night's Enlightner?

1763 W. Warburton Doctr. Grace I. i. 32 Is it possible, then, to suppose them [sc. the Apostles] to be deserted by this Inlightener?

1781 R. Jones Inq. State Med. i. 4 A person would be inclined to disbelieve that a Bacon and a Newton, those great enlightners of human reason, had ever existed.

a1790 A. Smith Ess. (1795) 54 The Sun, the great enlightener of the universe,..shedding light and heat on all the worlds that circulated around him.

1840 J. S. Mill Civilization in Diss. & Disc. (1859) I. 187 Literature..has almost entirely abandoned its mission as an enlightener and improver of them [sc. the current sentiments].

1851 G. S. Faber Many Mansions iv. iv. 351 The great Enlightener of Life and Immortality.

1898 G. Wallas Life Francis Place vi. 161 The political economists are the great enlighteners of the people.

1907 G. Massey Anc. Egypt I. vii. 419 He who had been Horus of the two horizons and also Kheper the self-originating force was now the traverser and enlightener of the double earth with his rays.

1947 Amer. Anthropologist 49 156 The status of the teacher as leader was utilized rather than his function as an enlightener of students.

1988 P. Toynbee End of Journey 61 The ‘great’ theologians have been great misleaders far more than great enlighteners.

1795 Gentleman's Mag. Jan. 48/1 The conduct of all the present modern Enlighteners seems much of a piece with that which is thus wittily ridiculed.

1798 New Lights on Jacobinism 9 He always gave..a decided preference to the enlighteners, and in his reviews, treated them with particular notice.

1800 Monthly Mag. 8 597 The first practical victory won by the Enlighteners over their antagonists, was the suppression of the Order of Jesuits by Clement XIV.

1866 E. P. Evans tr. A. Stahr Life & Wks. Lessing vi. iv. 286 Both Kant and Lessing seek to comprehend man in the totality of his powers of thought and feeling,..whilst their opponents, the Enlighteners (Aufklärer) , take into account only the intellectual side of man.

1945 Amer. Anthropologist 47 11 The enlighteners with regard to many spheres of life were not as radical as often was supposed, and were hesitant in denouncing slavery.

1966 R. A. Nisbet Sociol. Trad. vii. 272 That there was perhaps a vital relation..was a point that he [sc. Voltaire], as an Enlightener, was less likely to brood upon than was, say, Tocqueville in the following century.

1997 T. P. Saine Probl. of being Mod. i. 41 Not even the most radical enlighteners—like Voltaire, who was attacked on all sides for his scepticism—really wanted to give up their Creator-God.